On with Kara Swisher - Twitter Spaces On: Elon, Elon, Elon … and Trump

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Today, we’re sharing a bonus episode of Kara’s Twitter Spaces conversation that was taped on Monday night. She’s joined by William Cohan, journalist and founding partner of Puck, and Scott Galloway, business professor and co-host of the Pivot podcast. Nayeema pops in with a question at the end — and you can too, if you join our next Twitter Spaces.  Follow us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema to tune in for future conversations.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. to hire? You need Indeed. William Cohen, a journalist and founding partner of Puck, which is one of my favorite places for news and newsletters, and Scott Galloway, a business professor and co-host of the Pivot podcast. Yes, my arc nemesis, Scott. I'm kidding. He's very good. We all like each other. They discuss Elon, Elon, Elon, and briefly, Ye, aka Kanye West, and Donald Trump. Clearly, all your favorite people, or perhaps they aren't, but they sure are good at capturing our attention. Have a listen, and Cara and I will be back Thursday with a fresh episode of On. I'm thrilled to welcome Bill Cohen, founder of Puck News, and my dear friend, Scott Galloway, co-host of Pivot. Today,

we're talking all things Elon, and now apparently Kanye. Hello, boys. How you doing? Thank you for having me, Carol. No problem, Scott. Unmute yourself. I know that's an unusual thing for me to say, but please do so. There's Scott right there. All right, Bill, I'm going to start with you because one of your pieces that you published last week on Puck titled The Elon Financial Mindfuck, I think it was one of my favorite pieces.

I've read about this whole thing and I've read a lot about them. You said there have been plenty of disastrous deals on Wall Street. AOL's purchase of Time Warner, Daimler-Benz's acquisition of Chrysler, the mergers of Sears and Kmart, but Elon's may be the worst of them. Can you tell me why you wrote that? Well, Cara, because through this twisting and turning of this deal, we're now in a position where the debt that the banks are going to issue to finance part of the deal, $13 billion on $44 billion, is going to have to be issued at a severe discount. from people on Wall Street, that could be 50 to 60 cents on the dollar so that the yield on the debt will be sufficient to attract investors to it so that the Wall Street banks can sell it. And if debt is trading initially at 50 or 60 cents on the dollar, that means it's trading at less than 100 cents on the dollar.

If it's trading at less than 100 cents on the dollar, that means that the debt is not worth par. It's not worth 100 cents on the dollar. And if the debt isn't worth 100 cents on the dollar, then the equity has to be worth zero, at least directionally, at least at the beginning, at least not accounting for some sort of option value. So how could there be a worse deal than one that hasn't closed yet, where already the $31 billion of equity that he's going to put in it is worthless?

What's a deal that's close to that, that the debt sells for that? A bankrupt company. Any company in bankruptcy, the debt trades below 100 cents on the dollar. Mm hmm. a meme stock, if the debt is trading at a significant discount to 100 cents, that means creditors don't think they're going to get paid back 100 cents. So they're not getting 100 cents in the dollar. In the pecking order of a capital structure, that means the equity, which is down at the bottom of the capital structure, is wiped out, is worthless, which is something you and Scott were talking about last week on Pivot.

And absolutely right. I mean, that's I mean, so here the deal hasn't even closed yet. Right. And already the equity, 31 billion, 24 billion, which is coming from our buddy Elon, you know, is worthless. So he is essentially like putting money in a stove and burning it, correct or not? He gets the company and he gets option value on the company. He gets option value on potentially being able to work his magic, whatever that is, whatever secret sauce he's got planned for Twitter, bringing Donald Trump back, bringing all these horrible people back, whatever he wants to do, lighting the whole company up in flames so that it's worth more than he's paying for it. Then, you know, he buys that too. Right. So he buys the debt.

You know, he owes the debt at 100 cents. And he, you know, buys the whole company where he owns whatever, 78% of it, with the other percentage owned by his buddies who ponied up to $7.1 billion. And together they can try to make something of it. Try to make something of it. Try to make something of it. What do you think they can make of it, Scott Galloway? You have been wrangling.

You're still on. You need to unmute yourself. But what can they make of it, Scott Galloway? So as soon as they kind of get past this fever dream of attempting to explain what free speech is, recognizing they have no concept or nobody really understands what they mean by free speech other than putting Trump back on the platform, which he will not do. He does not want to share the spotlight with Donald Trump. This isn't about free speech. This is about me speech. Specifically, Elon Musk wants more of his speech spread to the four corners of the earth.

The things they could do are move to subscription. In my opinion, have more moderation or more enforcement of identification, maybe something like a light blue check that says you're not a bot or it's assigned to a specific IP or you're not trying to create a discourse that is more coarse, and then move to payments. If he were able to, you know, he has an unbelievable following. If he were able to constantly promote Twitter's capabilities as a payment platform, he could probably correctly say this is the WeChat of the West and try and recover some of the 60 or 70 percent in value he shows up behind when he occupies or takes the keys to this house. The question I have, actually, can I ask Bill a question, Kara? Sure, please do. So, if there's $13 billion in debt, that means they have interest payments they have to make

every year. The EBITDA on this thing is a billion bucks, and I doubt the cash flow is a half a billion. Does that mean that, by my math, it means he has to call his buddies and say, hey, sorry about burning your capital, but I also need you to come up with your share of interest payments every year to hold on to this equity such that this doesn't become the quickest movement from close to default in the history of corporate America? Aren't they just starting? Aren't they just buying a yacht and the expenses are just starting? Absolutely, Scott. I mean, if they don't make, if they make it miss an interest payment, that is a payment default. The creditors can put them into involuntary bankruptcy if they don't

cure it. And the only way to cure a payment default is by making the payment or negotiating some sort of debt for equity swap right from the get-go, which means that the people who buy the debt at a discount, the so-called distressed debt buyers, the Apollos of the world or the double lines of the world, the other wise guys are out there, he's going to be negotiating from Mark Rowan on day one at Apollo, and I'm sure he's not going to want to do that. So to avoid that, he has to come up with the interest payment himself,

the delta between the free cash flow of Twitter and the interest payment, whatever it is, $500 million, or ask those other 18. Ask Larry Ellison. Ask Mark Andreessen for their share of the money that's lacking to pay off the interest payment. And that has to happen every six months. And so he can buy the debt himself, correct? He can buy the debt himself either now or after it closes or while it's closed. He can

buy it at 50 cents on the dollar. That would probably be the smartest thing for him to do so it doesn't get into the hands of the distressed guys. And then he can just retire that debt and not have to worry about the interest payments on that debt. So he would overpay for it and then buy it back himself? That's right right he has to buy down okay let's let's focus on the multiples for a minute he's paying 44 billion dollars for this company that's 44 times ebitda okay that's way too much right the market is basically saying this company is sort of worth seven or eight times ebitda leave it does a billion uh that's a billion. Say it's worth seven or eight billion dollars. That's the amount of the debt,

what the debt is trading for, that 50 cents on the 13 billion. He's got to buy that multiple down so that he can afford the debt that's on this company or else it's in distressed land or technical default land or payment default land. And then what happens? Because some people say,

if he has them over a barrel because he owes them, right? This is not a new thing, fresh thing. What could happen? No, no, no. They have him over a barrel. Right. Explain why that is. Because a lot of people go into debt and then they have to sort of save it. Right. So, you know, sometimes people say, well, if you borrow, you know, a dollar, you know, you owe somebody. If you borrow a billion dollars, you've got them in your pocket. Here's a situation where, yes, he's borrowing $13 billion, but that's 13 times EBITDA, which is an extremely high amount of debt on a company that only comes up with a billion dollars a year.

on a company where it only comes up with a billion dollars a year. So to sell that debt, to get it off of their balance sheet so they don't have to take the mark-to-market loss themselves, which these original banks that are paying 100 cents on the dollar for this, they have to mark it down to a discount so that investors will buy it and take it, buy it from them. And to do that, they have to make the yield something that looks like a piece of paper that would be issued in the junk market today, something with a double digit yield. And at that point, they're dealing with distressed buyers. You miss a payment with a distressed buyer and they can automatically put you into involuntary bankruptcy. And then what? Well, in bankruptcy, equity gets wiped out 99.9% of the time.

Not always. There are examples like Hertz and others where, you know, the bankruptcy, for whatever reason, doesn't wipe out the equity holders. But 99 times out of 100, equity holders get wiped out in every bankruptcy and creditors on the company. So he has to come up. Because. Go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead.

Well, just because they can't pay them the money that they're owed. Very simple. So he has to. They're contractually owed the money. He has to come up with some sort of magic pill that will suddenly double their EBITDA or something. Correct. Or.

That's one way to go. Or. Or buy down the debt. Buy down the debt by himself. Or what? Or lose funds. He can't take loans because they've already taken loans. No, there's no more debt that they can get on this thing.

On this thing. It's already way over leveraged. 13 times even does. Way, way over leveraged. Okay. So, Scott, one of the things you talked about, this sounds volatile, and you said Elon brings volatility, not value. Now, he's brought value to a lot of places.

So talk about why that's the case here as opposed to other things he's endeavored. It's not, this guy isn't Trump that keeps leaving behind shitty businesses in his wake. So yeah, you have to acknowledge SpaceX and Tesla are remarkable companies that have created hundreds of billions in value. But if it's Dogecoin, But if it's Dogecoin, if it's GameStop, and if it's Twitter, I would argue he just brings chaos. I think he leaves Twitter deeply damaged. And, I mean, I think moderation and subscription go the opposite way. And he showed up with an acquisition offer. And now when I get together with the investors who I had soft circled, we feel like we dodged a bullet because the more you find out about this company, and granted, he's added a lot of negative value. more you find out about this company and granted he's added a lot of negative

value what you found out is just quite frankly twitter is a hugely influential business it is a shitty business and he leaves this thing the morale here has been damaged he has played with this thing like my dog leah plays with a k ball. So it's just, he has shown a total lack of grace. I think there are very few brands, we talk about this daily, so we don't, we see the damage here incrementally. But if you look at Twitter six months ago, and I would add, if you look at the Musk brand six months ago, both of this come out of this deeply impaired. All right. So, Bill, what do you think about that? Do you think that's the case or does it matter? Bankers, we're going to get to banks in a second, but bankers are what? Wall Street is willing to

do business with just about anybody at some point. But what is their attitude right now, would you say? Oh, hating life. Anybody involved in this deal on his side is hating life. Explain that for the regular people. Sure. I mean, because, you know, the fees that they're going to get either for providing M&A advice or committing to this $13 billion debt are going to be trivial compared to the losses they face in trying to sell this debt into the marketplace. In other words, the discount that we were talking about that they would have to take to sell this debt. So we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, billions of dollars in losses. Collectively.

Collectively. And their fees are maybe $100 million, maybe $200 million. So it's a total mismatch. Now, Morgan Stanley, CFO, was asked about this the other day on the earnings call about how they hedged this or had they hedged any of their recent leveraged finance deals. And the answer came back pretty much that they had hedged. deals. And the answer came back pretty much that they had hedged. So maybe they passed this risk off to somebody else. And so that'll be sort of fun to watch. Somebody in the market was going to get stuck with this risk that Morgan Stanley laid off on them and is going to be squeezed and is going to start squealing. And so some hedge fund could come a cropper soon because of this. croppers soon because of this. But, you know, Barclays, you know, Japanese banks, they're all in a world of pain over this Twitter deal. And, you know, at one point they probably thought, oh, my God, I can't believe how lucky I am to work for the world's richest guy on this great deal. There aren't any deals this year. This is a huge deal. We're going to make so much money. And now they're just hating life. They're hating life. Is that how they talk, Bill? Is that the way they discuss things?

Yeah, that's the way they talk. All right, so can the bankers get out of it at all? You had talked about this briefly and said, pretty much everyone has said, Matt Levine, a bunch of different analysts, no, they can't not lend him the money. No, they're committed to provide him the money and they've been paid fees for that commitment.

No, there's no way out. No way. QE Clo. QE Clo. No way out. No way out. An existential novel by Jean-Paul Sartre. There's no way out.

No. So I love it. It's so nice that you're so erudite. So Scott, not as erudite, give me a title of what this business is going to look like if he takes it over. And do you actually think it's going to end that way? The title of this business will be the Elon show. And jazz hands and a lot of weapons of mass distraction to try and get you to look over here and not look at the business.

Trying to stabilize the ship. I mean, he's a bright guy. If he was smart, he would probably attempt to show up and just steady the ship, stop the defection, stop people leaving, put a thoughtful, trusted person in charge. I think he needs three to six months just to stabilize the ship. I think this thing is in real trouble right now.

I'd be very interested to see what their earnings call is like. But again, I think it's just showing that he's not there to be... I mean, if he wants to burn the village to save it, fine. But I think he's going to have to show up and be an adult here. Greatness is in the agency of others. And you got to think that he can't build great companies like Tesla and SpaceX without understanding the importance of management and making them feel at least respected. He's treated these people with a total lack of respect. So I think he has

a lot of kissing and making up to do for about three or six months and then to try and implement something resembling a strategy around the things we talked about. But Bill, I had a couple more questions for you. I noticed the same thing in the Morgan Stanley call. The CFO gave body language that they had offloaded the risk. So somewhere out there is a $4 to $6 billion grenade that is going to explode in somebody's face. And we don't know who, but someone is going to have to disclose this in the next 90 days. I also wonder, you know, what's going to happen if he has, I mean, the M&A fees don't make up for the absolute shit kicking that somebody's going to take with this debt.

The question I have is these individuals who sponsored the equity, are they totally tied up or can they bail on the deal? And how does, I'll ask you the same question I keep asking rhetorically, how does Sequoia Capital, who committed $800 million to this thing, call Ontario teachers and Michigan's, the endowment from Michigan and Yale and say, we spent, we burned $800 million of your money because the equity capital is zero here on day one because we want to be tight with Elon. How does that conversation go? Well, Scott, as we both know, first of all, I don't know whether these equity players, the Larry Ellisons or the Sequoia or the market intrecents, or frankly, my favorite, which is Prince Al-Waleed, who decided to roll over his stake when he could have gotten the 5420.

He decided to roll over and is going to face plant a billion nine, a billion six of which is profit. I don't know whether those guys can either pull out, change their mind. I mean, what's he going to do if they say, no, we're not funding this? I don't know whether he has a binding contract with them or not. But I also think, and I'd be interested in your view, too, is that you don't have a goes. They'll say, oh, those people who are saying the equity is worthless, they don't know what they're talking about. Look at these financial projections. This is what we underwrote it on. This is where it's going.

Look at Elon. He's such a great businessman. Look what he's done with Tesla. Look what he's done with SpaceX. He's going to turn this thing around. This thing is going to gush cash because he's going to do X, Y, and Z. And this thing, look at the DCF of this, the discounted cash flow. Look at the IRR.

This thing is going to be a huge home run. That's what they're going to say to Ontario teachers. They're not going to say we face planted $900 million. What are they saying not to Ontario teachers then? Oh, amongst themselves? They're saying, how do we get out of this fucking thing? Excuse me. That's okay.

And that you think that they will not pull out nonetheless, correct? That they will not at the last minute? Well, if I were them, I'd pull out if I can. What about the prince? Can he do that? That's like, he could have made it. I don't know if the prince can change his vote to get the cash

or has to stick with his election already. I don't know the answer to that. If I were him, I'd be exploring that big time. And I do know him. I wrote a Vanity Fair profile about him once upon a time. He's a wild and crazy guy. I'm sure he will do whatever he can to change that election.

All right. And then who has the grenade? We don't know. Who's got it? Oh, you mean the grenade that Morgan Stanley passed off? We don't know. What do you think? Somebody like Bill Hwang and Archie Goetz, if he was still around.

Some hedge fund bought that risk from Morgan Stanley. Hoping for what? Hoping that the deal closes and debt trades at par and, you know. Yeah. They make the interest payments and this thing's a home run. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

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he certainly was for a couple weeks, as you noted, and I noted. But lately, he's become Madam Secretary with Ukraine, Taiwan, Russia, all kinds of statements, China, all kinds of statements. And of course, Starlink, which I think was a boon to Ukraine. He, I think very normally wants some payment for what he was doing. He never did say it was free. He kind of acted like it was, but he certainly didn't say that. did say it was free. He kind of acted like it was, but he certainly didn't say that. How does this affect the deal, if at all? Now, none of us are international relations majors, but we're definitely, neither is Elon. So, actually, I was an international relations major. What am I talking about? Can you give me a sense of it affects the deal, both of you? Scott, why don't you go first? I don't think it does. I think that the Chancery Court and Larry Fink and every shareholder and even Parag and the board are like, oh my gosh, come on in, the water's fine. Here are the keys. I'm going to Disneyland with a

ridiculous amount of money and I'm getting 54 bucks for a company $13. Here, your mess that you overpaid for. What you referenced before, Kara, is actually, I think, the most underreported or the most important story, I would argue, in the world right now. And that is we have the wealthiest man in the world who is not an elected official, who understands technology, is a technological genius, provides communications infrastructure to Ukraine in a very sensitive moment, good for him, and then decides, I'm going to turn it off. So, and then- He didn't turn it off. Let's be fair. He didn't turn it off, but go ahead. Well, did he threaten to turn it off, correct? Well, I'm not really clear what he threatened.

And didn't he say that he's not going to turn it on Crimea because he's worried about nuclear war? That's been suggested. Okay, so I would argue this is where we are. Do we want Secretary Blinken and our Department of Defense making those calls? Or do we want a guy who makes a really fucking awesome electric vehicle deciding battlefield communications in what could be a nuclear confrontation. This is the idolatry of innovators gone absolutely berserk that we now have an individual in this position instead of the Department of Defense. What if the CEO of Northrop Grumman said, I'm worried about nuclear war. I'm turning off all of our nuclear submarines.

all of our nuclear submarines. And I just, I think this is, I think this is such a failure of our democracy. I think that the fact that we don't have elected representatives who saw this company coming, I don't even think

it's about Elon Musk. I think it's about our government. I think they really screwed up there. I would agree. I think our government should have had other vendors or had, he's a vendor. That's what he is.

He's a vendor. Bill, what do you think? Deal, hits the deal? No, I don't think it's going to affect the deal one way or another. I think they are separate. I agree with Scott that it's completely inappropriate for him to throw himself into the middle of this.

But, you know, the hubris around Elon is really legendary. So, you know, I guess it's not really a surprise, but it won't affect the deal because the battle lines are already drawn on this deal. It's les jeux sont faits. Again, to quote my friend Jean-Paul Sartre, les jeux sont faits, you know, the games are over. They've got to sell this debt at whatever price they can sell it for. He has until October 28th to close this thing that whatever price they can sell it for. He has until October 28th

to close this thing that's coming around the mountain very fast. He's going to have to close this thing on day one. The debt will sell for whatever, 50 or 60 cents on the dollar. Technically, the equity is worthless. And now he's got an option to try to make it worth something for however long he wants to hold on to this puppy for. Yeah. All right. So two things, and then I want to get to Kanye for a second, and then we'll get to the questions from, uh, from all the listeners. We have quite a few. Um, what, what would be a, who would be a good CEO for this? Each of you, uh, Bill, why don't you start? Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Oh Jesus. Um, you know, that's,'s i i don't know who would want to um you know take on this uh maybe maybe someone like a dan shulman is the ceo of paypal who seems to like to take

on challenges uh like this and doesn't mind mixing it up with the big boys i've known dan since he was at virgin mobile and i was his banker but i you know he's one name that comes uh to mind uh i don't know it's a tough one cara who why would you want to be the ceo of this thing at this time i wouldn't i would unless it was an enormous amount of money, guaranteed pay, sort of like a Trump lawyer, right? Give me the $3 million up front. Or the LIV golf shit show in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, something like that. I think that would work.

Scott, do you have any ideas besides yourself? I don't think he'll do this. The smartest thing he could do is keep Parag and come in and say, this has been, you know, acquisitions are emotional. This is full body contact. what you've accomplished here. I realize how difficult this is. And I want you to stay the course. I have some thoughts and some ideas that I'll share with you over the course of the next three, six, and 12 months. But I'm smart enough to know that when you show up to a situation like this, you find out you're not as smart as you thought and they're not as dumb as you'd hoped. And so I want to work with Parag. I want to work with the team here. And I ask that you all stay in your positions and give me the benefit of the doubt for 12 months. And I apologize for what has been an emotional trying process. But I think the smartest thing he could do would be to keep Parag in place as an olive

branch. Because there's nothing he has said or any strategy that he's outlined that's in direct contrast with what Parag has said. He's just decided he doesn't like the guy. But I have absolutely no names on my short list for who would want this shit shot. Me neither. Me neither. They brought up Oprah. Oh, come on. I'm telling you, it was on one of the lists. That was Jack wanted, I think mostly for the board. Are there any board members you would say? But anybody on the board you think would be helpful? Kimball Musk.

Probably he'll be on the board. It's not going to be a board of directors. It's going to be a group of overpaid whores who will just do whatever he wants. This isn't going to be a board. He shouldn't have a board. Why pretend? Trump

doesn't have a board. Can you imagine Elon, you know him, saying what Scott just said he would have to say to Parag to keep him? No, I do not. I do not see him doing that. He could.

He could, but he won't. He might for a second and then he'll change his mind. It's very it could change at any minute. All right. Lastly, and then I want to get to Kanye very briefly before questions. Is there any way this deal does not go through any way that you foresee either of you? Bill, you say no. It's going. Well, no. What I say is that October 28th could come and go with him not getting it done. It then goes to trial. He loses at trial and is told by the judge that he has to close. And however they choose to enforce that or however they can enforce that you know remains to be seen uh you know he delays he obfuscates he then starts to put forth some sort of compromise settlement number uh you know you're the wise man prof g has suggested the difference between where it's trading by the way as you you guys foretold many months ago, that asymptotically getting closer to 5420,

which it's been about 50, the difference between where it's trading and 5420 is a lower and lower number now. And so maybe that's a face-saving way the board can get out of this with Elon. Or maybe he says, I'll give you $10 billion, or as I was saying, 5 billion.. Maybe it's $10, maybe it's $15. Maybe that's the way he gets out of closing this. But at some point, the compromise number is going to be so high,

might as well buy it. Yeah, exactly. Which is our point. Scott, you think there's any way, or just what Bill just outlined? I think he's on the green mile. I think he's appealed to every court possible and he's he's he's on the green mile. This is it. And he will rather than the the absolute second worst thing in his life right now is to close on this deal for the reasons that Bill's outlined, the worst thing would to be go under oath and start asking questions from someone who is not a sycophant and that he actually has to tell the truth or commit perjury. He cannot do that. He has told so many lies that he literally can't go under debt. He would rather burn $33 billion of his own and his friend's money than go under deposition right now. All right. All right. And Trump coming back?

You said no. No. Scott, what about you, Bill? I think it would be a big mistake, but I think he would do it. I do, too. All right. First, very quickly, I think that only deserves quickly, Kanye West apparently making an offer for Parler in the Wall Street Journal said in an interview,

Mr. Farmer said discussions with Mr. West about a parlor deal began casually when his wife, Candace Owens, an American conservative author and commentator, attended Mr. West's fashion show in Paris. Both Mr. West and Ms. Owens wore White Lives Matter t-shirts at the event. I don't know what to say about this, but so I'll let you, Scott. Scott, what do we think? I think he's, well, you start. I think Candace Owens is a wonderful wife, and she's using her charm to bail her husband out of an impossible business situation. I think that she is securing her economic security for her and her family by talking, I'm going to use this term literally and metaphorically, crazy into spending real money for something that is worth less than zero.

I mean, for all the blather about free speech, these businesses, they're the shittiest business in a shitty sector. They don't work. And so if somebody wants to buy it, I'll go to, if somebody wants to pay, if somebody wants to pay $100,000 from my 1984 Honda Accord, I'll get my wife to go to fashion shows with them. Bill, please follow that. It's hard to follow Scott on that. But I would just say that ever since Kanye leapt on stage at whatever it was, the Music Awards, and took the award out of Taylor Swift's hands, I've kind of lost respect for the guy. So that's where I am.

All right. So you think this is not a deal. Is anyone talking about it on Wall Street? Well, we were talking about it today at our Puck meeting. Look, we couldn't figure out what he paid or offered or will pay or won't pay or whether it'll close or not. I mean, he's kind of gone off the deep end here. So I think it'll be pretty irrelevant whether it'll close or not. I mean, he's kind of gone off the deep end here. So I think it'll be pretty irrelevant whether he buys it or not.

I don't think it'll happen. Sort of like, you know, Trump social. I mean, kind of irrelevant, right? Right. And same thing there. What do you think is going to happen? I don't think it's going to happen. I think it's not going to happen.

I think they just bought an interesting company, a little technology company platform thing. I think they only just recently got $16 million in more investments. And who knows if that's so. This is a loser. They're all they're all struggling, except for, you know, maybe a gab or a rumble will do just fine. But there's not going to be a lot of these. They're terrible businesses. And Twitter's the big man on campus here, and it's a shitty campus. I don't know what else to say. It's just bad. I don't know. And I feel sorry for him, actually, even though he's a stone-cold anti-Semite. I think he's been taken advantage of here, maybe, or, you know, whatever. People tell him what he needs to tell. But that's the story of his life recently, you know. So, he doesn't, he just can't run a social network. He can't, he can't. I just, it's sad for more than anything, I think. Support for this podcast comes from Aura. Finding the perfect gift can feel impossible this time of year, especially when you're shopping for the people you love the most.

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This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year, so don't miss out. Terms and conditions apply. Monday deal is their best of the year. So don't miss out. Terms and conditions apply. Get up to 55 hours of listening with active noise cancelling enabled, soft microfibre cushions engineered for comfort and a range of colours and finishes. Dyson OnTrack. Headphones remastered. Buy from DysonCanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Anyway, let's get to some questions from the audience we just have a few we've got about 10 minutes let's try asia is that your name go ahead thank you uh so i wanted to ask this

does the conversation change if we're talking about twitter as a social media platform versus Spaces versus social audio. Do you think that that might be maybe the reason that Elon became interested? Through Spaces and audio, social audio. Huh. Okay. All right. Interesting question. Either of you, go ahead. I don't have any thoughts, Kara. You're probably most qualified to answer that. You know the product better. No. No, I don't think so. I think. You're probably most qualified to answer that. You know the product better. No, no, I don't think so. I think they've got to make it into something. You can make some money with this. You can make some money with advertising. I think they're all small businesses. If they go into payments, I think absolutely. I think absolutely. They could probably do well, but it's kind of this idea of a super app, which is the reason he was using X.com is because he owned that company. That's where he first got his start. And I think he he really the payments is the only way to go.

Bill? You know, I mean, I would love to see the PowerPoint that he had his bankers put together to show all these equity investors and the dead underwriters. I'd love to see these projections of how he's going to turn a billion dollars into five billion, I'm sure, of EBITDA. I'm sure that's kind of the number that he's put out there. I have no idea how he's going to do it. If he brings back Donald Trump, I think a lot of people leave and that'll be a negative. There's already a fair amount of advertising on the site. I mean, it's kind of like enough already on the advertising. It's driving me crazy.

You know, so I don't want more of that. Maybe there's a subscription model, as Scott talks about, and maybe these payments thing. There's a lot of competition in the payment space. So I don't know how they're going to compete on that front. I don't think spaces brings in any money. So if somebody out there has got the PowerPoint, please slip it to us. Yeah, that would be great. We'd love to look at it. Okay. We'd love to look at that. Okay. Roseanne, question?

Okay. Okay. Roseanne question. What happens to the employees of Twitter from the top who have equity to, uh, just the workers? Thank you. Okay. That's a great question. I actually have spoken to, uh, let me just start bill. Um, uh, I've talked to a lot of people and the top people are going to get a big payday, big payday, big, big, big amount of money for their stock. Um, regular people, not so much. I think a lot of people feel like they're not going to get anything practically, and they're going to be stuck there in a bad job market coming through, even for tech people. So I think we have to differentiate between who we're talking about. Parag, I don't know why he would stay, Scott, for example.

I don't know if Scott left or not. Scott, there he is. I don't know. He's going to make a fortune. Why should he stay and put up with you know the guy who calls them names um i don't know bill well 50 54 20 in cash is a really nice payday uh if scott has said it should be trading at 13 bucks or whatever uh it's a really nice payday so the people who have stock options on a change of control are going to get paid out very nicely.

The ranking file that probably doesn't have any of that. They have jobs. What Parag might stay, you know, for the one reason people do anything money, more money. I mean, maybe Elon decides he has to,

he's the only choice to run this thing because no one else will do it. And you have to give him a big fat new contract. Yeah. And that's why he'll do it. Yeah, we'll see. I don't think so. All right. Jay McKee, please speak.

Question? We have to unmute. Yeah, it keeps being suggested that Tesla and SpaceX are incredibly successful companies? By what metric? Because it seems like their success is betting on Elon delivering in the future things that don't exist now. Their cars are kind of eh by the competition. And Starlink doesn't look like it scales. It's all betting on StarShip.

Okay. All right. Good question. All right. Go ahead, Scott. I mean, buddy, we're brothers in arms. And if you want to sit around and shitpost Elon, I'm with you. And I can do this all day and night. But there's just no, I don't think there's any denying that Tesla is an incredible company.

day and night, but there's just no, I don't think there's any denying that Tesla is an incredible company. And I think they have about 60% share of the electrical vehicle market in the US. It continues to exceed analysts' expectations around deliveries and numbers, whether it's producing their own microchips such that they don't have the same sort of slowdowns in supply chain. They have had some recall efforts, but it's an amazing car. And the guy's landing two rockets concurrently on two barges and the only one that it seems to be hitting milestones around transporting people in space against other companies, military industrial complex companies with much deeper pockets and longer history. So I just, I think you got to acknowledge these are incredible companies. I also believe that Tesla is massively overvalued and I'm just holding to that. I think it'll be 50 bucks or less a share

within the next, call it 36 months. But I just think you've got to give the guy credit for electrifying the auto industry and accomplishing something remarkable in terms of he can transport and haul material into space for less money per kilogram than any rocket company in history. The Falcon Heavy rocket puts stuff into space for less money than anybody else. So they're great companies. Valuation is a different animal. All right. Bill, any thoughts on that? I agree with Scott completely.

SpaceX just blows my mind. Landing that rocket in the middle of the ocean on a barge, unbelievable. He's definitely electrified. The car industry is completely overvalued uh a lot of their profits from many many years until maybe the last one have come from selling carbon credits not even from making cars so the valuation is way way way out over skis of course anybody who's short it has gotten murdered as well uh He's also not only electrified the car industry, he's electrified his competitors. And so he's going to have competitive competition right and left.

So I agree with Scott. He is the Netflix of cars. I think there's some very good cars coming out. And that's the problem. And they're going to come in. They're not as good. They will be. Absolutely.

It's expensive. They will be. They will be. And people will want choice. And they don't want to just, you know, several people who are designers are like, why does the cars always, why do digital cars always have to look digital and not beautiful? There's going to be beautiful cars. I would agree. I, I, I think the Tesla's I've ridden in Scots, speaking of which, uh, but, uh, and many others, uh, and, uh, and they're, they're really nice cars but i would like a different kind um for sure and you'll get it soon in fact i will okay all right um let's have

two more joey go ahead joe hey i just wanted to talk about how or ask about how like a lot of the way that we've been framing this conversation is through the economic angle of what Elon's been doing. But what would you say to the young men that I'm specifically saying past tense, had idealized Elon in the past? Like I have, well, may I ask you, why? Why don't you? Why don't you anymore? You said past tense. Yeah, in middle school and high school, I had like, all the Elon shirts, the Vance biography, all that stuff. But he's just become such a terrible person. Maybe he was all along, but he continues to work against his workers. He continues to weaponize his voice to make himself more powerful instead of just make the world better like what seemed like when he had started.

Well, you sound like my sons, actually, my two sons. Same thing. It's a really interesting thing. They really did idolize him. And I keep telling him he's more complex. And I will tell you that. I know people think I'm too nice to him. I have encountered him in a different way. And some of the stuff that he's doing now is really not what I would characterize as good or nice or anything, just really kind of gross. But I would agree. All right. Answer that question, Scott and Bill, really quickly. Thank you.

Great question, Joey. The comparison to Charles Lindbergh is the apt one. Someone who deserves and receives warranted admiration globally, arguably the most famous person in the world. And his legacy is being dramatically tarnished because people, takes advantage, weaponizes his followers, treats people with a total lack of grace, and has no respect for institutions, and shows a tremendous lack of gratitude for how fortunate he is and conflates luck with talent. There's a reason he's not launching rockets out of Montreal or built an electric vehicle company in South Africa, but as the first to shitpost America. It's gross. It's unpatriotic. And it's a heartening to listen to young men who see this evolution and understand

that this is not how grown men or people who've been granted so many blessings should behave. All right. Bill, any follow-up on that? All I would say is I can't wait for Walter Isaacson's book, so maybe we can find out how this man ticks and why he behaves the way he does. I would say you need to go right to dad. Dad is where it all starts and probably ends. I hate to say it, but I have a feeling

that's what it's going to be about, a lot about it. All right. I'm going to let Naima Raza, my producer, ask a question. Go ahead, Naima. You're muted for once. There you go. Trying to be quiet when Scott's in town. Hi, guys. That was very interesting. I have a question about- That hurts. There you go. I have a question about the man we're not talking about. I know it's Elon, Elon, Elon, Elon, but Trump, uh, Scott, you've said that Elon won't let him back on cause he wants it to be the Elon show yet. Everybody's, you know, big question is, will he, or won't he come back? Trump has said he won't come back.

And I guess Bill, my questions to you, doesn't he have some kind of fiduciary responsibility, a true social to not, you know, partake in Twitter or to, not that he's a man of his word necessarily but isn't there some kind of limitation on on like the fear of his return to twitter yeah i mean first of all truth social is a private company that trump owns of course uh it hasn't merged yet with dwac or whatever the heck it is. Right, when it's SPAC. Just looking increasingly unlikely that's SPAC.

So he's not going to have any fiduciary obligation to anybody except himself, and we know that he's very good at treating himself well. I think that he'll just absolutely do Twitter if he is allowed back on, just like he'll go back onto Facebook if he's allowed back on, and he'll still do Truth Social. He'll do everything and anything that anybody will let him do. Yeah, because the megaphones are more valuable to him than the upside. The megaphones. The megaphones. All right, Scott, any answer?

I agree with Bill, but I'd stick to my guns here. My prediction is Elon wants it to be the Elon show and doesn't want to share the sunlight with anybody. And we'll come up with a bunch of reasons for why he will defer to Twitter's good judgment and not allow any competition back on the platform. Well, he's definitely not letting Kanye back on. In any case, free speech to the people. Thank you so much. The wonderful Twitter space was produced by Michelle Berg and Naima Raza. Also, thanks to Amber Davis, Maya Valerio, and Twitter Spaces team. David Wilson engineered this episode.

And special thanks to Blake Neschick, Christian Castro Rossell, and Rafaela Seward, the fearless producers who make Kara Swisher and me sound good day after day after day. We'll be back Thursday with a new episode.