The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter’s Soul by Kurt Wagner

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul by Kurt Wagner https://amzn.to/3ThvILf An expertly reported investigation into Twitter’s messy corporate history—including Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022, its outsized cultural impact, and its significant role in shaping how the world gets its news. Bloomberg journalist Kurt Wagner takes you inside Twitter’s everchanging headquarters, charting its rise from flippant 140-character posts to one of the world’s most consequential tech companies. From Jack Dorsey’s triumphant return as CEO in 2015 to the rise and fall of @RealDonaldTrump to the contentious $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, Battle for the Bird exposes the messy reality and relentless challenges that come with building a global social network. With enthralling minute-by-minute accounts of Musk’s controversial takeover from insider employees, Battle for the Bird exposes the real-world impact of the South African billionaire’s new role as owner, and employees’ growing horror as Dorsey’s idealistic promises (and the “Twitter” name) go up in flames before their eyes. Battle for the Bird is the definite, objective, and substantive account of the fight over the world’s most influential social media platform. Now, for the first time—through deeply sourced, exclusive interviews—you will discover how the visionary promises of one iconoclast gave way to the darker, yet-to-be-defined motives of another, upending the virtual status quo and impacting the flow of news and information to the masses. About the author Kurt Wagner is an award-winning business and technology journalist covering social media for Bloomberg, where he has worked since 2019. He’s been covering social media since 2013 and has spent years writing about Twitter and its impact on society. He previously worked at the influential tech outlets Recode, Mashable, and Fortune. Kurt grew up near Seattle, went to college at Santa Clara University, and now lives in Denver with his family. Follow him on Twitter or X @KurtWagner8

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The Iron Lady sings with that makes it official

Welcome to the big show We certainly appreciate you guys being here Thanks for tuning in as always We have the most amazing guests on the show And I'm excited for our guests that we have today The CEOs, the billionaires The boy house presidential advisors The people who bring you the Pulitzer Prize winning books and authors

And all the amazing ideas The great journalists from all the different CNN, Bloomberg Today we have all the different journalists That come on the show and share their stuff you're always going to learn on the chris voss show what we do ask you is that you go to goodreads.com for chest chris voss your family friends relatives go to youtube.com for chest chris voss linkedin.com for chest chris voss and all those crazy places on the internet today we have amazing journalists on the show kurt

wagner joins us for his new book this has been getting a lot of salacious press. Salacious press, as it were. And for the dig that he did in the journalism world of finding out all the secrets that came out about this. The book is called The Battle for the Bird. Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 billion fight for Twitter's soul. Came out February 20th, 2024. Kurt Wagner is an award-winning business and technology journalist covering social media for Bloomberg, where he has worked since 2019.

He's been covering social media since 2013 and has spent years writing about Twitter and its impact on society. He previously worked at the influential tech outlets Recode, Mashable, and Fortune. He grew up in Seattle, went to college at Santa Clara University, and now lives in Denver with his family. There you go. Welcome to the show, Kurt. How are you? Hey, I am great.

Thank you for that nice intro. There you go. You got all the stuff in there. I appreciate it. Well, you know, it's your bio, so I was just reading it. It is. It is my bio. Yeah, I know.

I could have sent you, like,'m kurt i work at bloomberg that would have been faster i do have a lot of people like my intro the energy that goes into it and they're like hey can we hire you just to walk around introduce us everywhere like every time we enter a room kind of like the president here you hear you uh so give us your dot coms where can people find you on the interwebs yeah i, I'm on what was formerly Twitter, now X, at KurtWagner8. I'm on Threads. I'm on LinkedIn. Obviously, I'm writing at Bloomberg quite regularly, so you can kind of find me on all

those places. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's your new book, Battle for the Bird? Yeah, I mean, the headline sort of captures it. I mean, this is the story of Elon's acquisition of Twitter, the fight that ensued, you know, the summer of 2022, where they were going at each other legally over this thing. But you know, this is, it's really a story that's bigger than that, right? I start the story, actually, several years before Elon even shows up, because I think there's a lot of really important stuff that happened in the lead up to this acquisition that people either aren't aware of or maybe need to be reminded of. So I'd say this is really the story of Twitter. It's the story of how we got to where we are now with Elon sort of being the cherry on top there. There you go. And do you cover,

how far back do you go in the origins of Twitter? Where do you start? It starts in 2015 when CEO Jack Dorsey returns to the company. He was the co-founder. He'd previously been CEO. There's a few details from flashbacks, if you will, from before that. But really, my version of this story is Jack's return in 2015 through about the first, I'll say, two to three months of Elon's takeover of Twitter. There you go. And you, and it really even covered, you know, why he decided to do it and how he, how he got into it and all that good stuff. What was it that drew you to the story? Why,

why did you, you know, according to your bio, you know, you've been writing about Twitter for a long time, but what was it that really drew you to it and said, Hey, I want to write a book on this? Yeah. Well, I'd wanted to write a book about Twitter for a while. It's actually kind of a funny story. Because I'd covered it so long, I always thought it was like an incredibly influential service. There were obviously the Trump years, right, where it was sort of like took on this new life of its own as the megaphone for a sitting U.S. president. And I was out pitching publishers like, hey, I want to write this like Twitter, Jack Dorsey book. And Elon showed up on the scene as I'm talking to publishers, he literally the meetings are being like derailed by, you know, Elon showing up. And it was just only natural,

of course, that you would sort of follow the story, right? He just made it so much more interesting. So I was able to keep sort of the first half of the book is probably more of my original premise and then the second half was just like it was unfolding as i was writing the book and i was sort of going where the story went i was one of the early users on twitter i was in the top 1000 early on in 2008 2009 2006 yeah well i i didn't get on until 2008 um but But I figured out how to game it very early on and build a following. And at one point, there was a group of us that were like, because they only had 40 people back then. And for some reason, I believe it was Ev thought 40 people was the max that it should ever have. And so there were at least one fight that I caused by working with West is Space from Union Square partners to tell them what I was seeing in the marketplace.

They were suspending so many people. I'm like, there is no trust left with corporates in your thing. And when Jack Dorsey came back with his little cucumber fucking... You just look at it and just be like, when does this company ever make a profit? Yeah. It's, I mean, it's got a colorful history to say the least. Right. I mean, it's, I think what people don't realize is that the cultural influence of Twitter is so dramatically, so much larger than the business ever was.

Right. so much larger than the business ever was, right? Like people often lump Twitter in with Facebook or YouTube or whatever as being these like hugely significant social platforms. But from a business standpoint, it was just, it was minuscule compared to those other ones. And to me, it's just like, I think it's important for people to sort of know that because I think that fact actually plays into a lot of, you know, Twitter story, right? Which is that it was always sort of an underdog, even though it sort of played in this bigger arena. It was never really, never really belonged there as a business. And I think that's sort of been part of the story for them. Yeah.

And you heard about the fights that Bev and, or Ev and Biz. Biz, yeah. And it was like the Three Stooges. It was Fred Wilson of Union Square Partners. That's right. And I emailed him some stuff and he writes me back and he goes, yeah, we just had an emergency board meeting over your whole letter and I sent your letter to him. And I'm like, that wasn't for public purpose. And so I caused one of those famous fights that

have been written about at least once. And so you go through this thing and you started out and you profile something i guess was kind of secret the disney acquisition where mark benioff and bob eiger were interested in buying it tell us a little bit about that that you tease out in the book yeah this is one of my favorite kind of chapters of the book and it's several years old at this point but i just like it's interesting so in 2016 twitter if you remember, they were going through this like pivot as a company to live. Like they were doing NFL streams.

They were doing like TV shows online. They were really trying to sort of be like a digital TV. And that summer, Mark Benioff at Salesforce approached them about a deal. And shortly after that, Bob Iger at Disney approached them about a deal. And suddenly they have like two real companies that are interested. So they're like, well, we need to run a process here, right? We need to make

sure we're getting the best price. And so they kind of go out, they talk to everyone you can imagine. And they ultimately come back and they're like, oh, we're with the original two guys who started this whole thing. Those are the only two real serious ones. And they expected formal offers from both companies. And the day they were supposed to be turned in, both companies walked away. And Twitter sort of left sitting there thinking they're going to go one of two directions. And here they are with nobody. And the one thing that I did kind of tease out that I hadn't ever read before was that Disney in particular ended up coming back to the table for a very short time. So they got really close.

They walked away. Twitter basically went and pitched hard to bring them back to the table, which worked briefly. Disney gave them such a low ball sort of bid that they floated that Twitter was like, well, it's too low to even entertain this thing. And they ended up going the other direction. But the reason I think it's important is there was always always this idea especially when elon showed up well why doesn't twitter just sell to facebook why doesn't twitter sell to google you know there's got to be another buyer out there and they're and they tried to do these things like they tried to find a buyer and they couldn't and so i think it's important history to keep in mind as elon shows up because

you kind of remember well this might have been their only option. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I predicted, and that's why I caused the fight over, I predicted that Facebook was going to win over getting the business over Twitter and Twitter was going to ruin its reputation and trust in the marketplace. Because I would go do speaking engagements to talk about Twitter and I'd be in front of whole companies and, and I'd, and I'd be like, how many of you have been suspended by Twitter? Or, you know, I would, I would hear this, you know, well, we've all been suspended by Twitter. And back then, you know, it was just crazy and imbalanced, you know, the fail whales and the thing. And how many people have other accounts completely blocked by Twitter? And I'm like, you guys are trashing with what you're doing, playing these games of blocking people and and

suspending people you know with your stupid little you know attitudes about you know stuff and you know i think they suspended people for retweeting at one point they didn't want to do retweets and i'm like you're just destroying any sort of trust value you have in the marketplace and facebook's gonna win and i was bloody right yeah so you you tell the story of how Elon starts coming in the picture and starts going down this pathway that ends up with him owning this thing. Give us a tease out if you would on that. Yeah. I mean, there's a few theories here, right? So he shows up on Twitter's doorstep in sort of late March of 2022. He's now the largest shareholder and they had no idea. He just sort of like appears, hey, LOL, here I am owning 10% of the company. But you know, there's a few theories as to why he started

building that stake in Twitter. And there's one that there's one that came out in a recent book by Walter Isaacson about Elon, which is essentially, you know, he had too much money. He didn't know what to do with it. Like most rich guys. He was like, what do I love? Oh, and I, instead of buying like a beach house in you know malibu he's oh i'm gonna you know buy twitter which i love um so that's theory one there's another interesting theory that i sort of explored slightly in my book which is that he really hated this account on twitter called elon jet at that it tracked his private plane and it posted you know when it took off and where it landed. And in January of 2022, he complained to Twitter CEO at the time, Parag Agarwal, and said,

you know, take this down. And Twitter, you know, basically ignored him. They didn't do it. And a few weeks later, he starts buying Twitter shares. So it's kind of an interesting timing, right? Like I can't say for certain that this is what led to it, but there are several people I talked to who thought the fact that he couldn't get them to remove this jet thing is what ultimately led him to build a stake. Now, I don't think he was like, I'm going to buy the company over this. But I think it's very reasonable to think that he was like, I'd love to be a shareholder. And now suddenly they have to listen to me a little bit more than they would otherwise. So those are some interesting reasons. I am the most powerful man in the world. have to listen to me a little bit more than they would otherwise so those are some interesting reasons i am the most powerful man in the world you will listen to me

exactly it's interesting because taylor swift is having the fight now over the jet and maybe she'll buy x off of off of maybe they'll team up i think she could afford it better than him maybe she's she's she's pretty rich um and i i don't think she's tied up in a bunch of businesses other than you know her own and it's doing really well so there you go it wasn't your book i think i saw the blurb the news blurb that he he started he started drugs may have been involved in some of these decisions so this is i actually this part is not in the book there have been rumors about elon taking drugs ever since I've started covering him. Really?

Yeah, you might be shocked. I've never seen the journals cover that yet. Well, the Wall Street Journal had a nice story that came out. So there is a lot of speculation that, you know, some of this could have been fueled by some drug use. I cannot say one way or the other i'll leave you know i'll point people to the journal story and just simply say that these have been sort of whispered loudly around elon for a long time i don't know exactly how much it played a role but it seems like it could have yeah and it's do you do you think he was maybe in some sort of weird dark place uh uh

you know he's he's kind of riding high on smacking home runs out of the park you know he's yeah everything's going well and it's been interesting and i imagine you've documented this in your book how it's really spun itself into a real toilet bowl situation and not been the real you know i've seen that in business where you know some guys can hit home runs for a while and then you know, I've seen that in business where, you know, some guys can hit home runs for a while and then, you know, all of a sudden they start hitting, you know, balls and fouls and, and it's really hard on them when you're used to hitting home runs all the time because they can't, can't figure it out. I think there's a, there's a great quote from a former

executive at Twitter. So it was a woman, her name's Esther Crawford. And she was there when Elon took over. She sort of bought into Elon's new vision, literally sleeping at the office, trying to be hardcore for Elon. And she ultimately got fired, as most people end up doing sometimes when they work for Elon. And she had this great, she tweeted sort of about her experience like months later. And she had this line that was like, you know, Elon's incredibly great at

physics-based problems or technically-based problems, you know, writing code, for example. But when it comes to a communications platform, when it comes to a platform that requires a lot of soft skills, you know, it requires a different type of emotional intelligence. And I think that's really astute observation, quite frankly. I think there's no doubt that Elon's incredibly smart, that he's obviously had some huge home runs. I'm not sure if the soft skills required to run Twitter are necessarily his strength.

And I think we're seeing that play out right now in the way that he sort of behaves on Twitter and how it's impacting their business. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, and, and, and, you know, we've, we, it's, it's rumored, I guess, that he's on the spectrum in some way or another. And sometimes those social skills are harder for people. You know, most people that are on the spectrum or autistic are savants i mean they're really brilliant smart people and they can do you know they can really do intelligent stuff and when you see some of the ways that he behaves on and talks i mean you know the interesting thing about social

media is people say what's in their head it's almost like you know used to have to get people drunk and go to the bar to find out what people really thought. But basically, in fact, back in the day, that used to be the joke in 2011, 2010. We used to tell people, Twitter is the bar, Facebook is the home, and LinkedIn is the office. So make sure that you perform in those sort of, don't go on LinkedIn and act like you're on Twitter. That's a pretty good rundown, actually. Isn't it? Yeah, that's what we used to teach people. And so we, you know, don't go on, don't go saying weird shit on LinkedIn. Cause you know, you have fun with your career after that. But you know, it's, and the other thing you get into is

you go through how the rise and fall of Donald Trump account. And it's weird, this battle that Twitter kind of seems like it's kind of left-leaning. And I suppose that's an interpretation for everybody. And then now it seems to flip to the right wing. And so you dig through all of that, the arc of that curve. I do. And the Trump years are really compelling to me, just not only because I lived, you live it, right? as a citizen of the united states you sort of live it but i covered the company during those years as well and it was really a struggle for them for twitter at the time to figure out what to do with this guy right

because in a lot of ways he was if not breaking the rules he was certainly walking right up to sort of like these rules they had in place around basic civility right no bullying people or no harassing people or whatever and and he would sort of challenge these things on a weekly basis but he's the president of the united states right so like they you can't just necessarily treat him or at least they didn't want to treat him in the same way they would treat you or I or any other sort of quote-unquote regular user and so it was really fascinating you know the book gets into sort of these internal struggles of what do you do when the most powerful person in the world is constantly sort of like pressuring you to do something about his

account and eventually they break, clearly, right? They ultimately end up banning him. But it took them, you know, four plus years to get to that point. And it was not an easy decision internally. Like they spent a lot of time and brainpower arguing over how to handle this account. And even the final decision was second guessed after the fact.

Yeah. I mean, I've been suspended on Twitter for far less than anything. You know, some of the right wing has said, and, and I, I had my big account suspended cause I followed too many people one day.

I was building a journalist list and, and I was adding in a Kip saying, you know, Hey, you're adding too many people per day and you're getting suspended. And so I stopped doing it. I woke up the next morning and someone was appearing on the podcast as a journalist and I went and followed them. Account immediately and and i'm like i get suspended for

that and this guy you know there are terrorists that are still on twitter uh yeah it was a hundred thousand plus account close to 200 000 people i built since 2008 and yeah this is a dumb thing to do i but i was trying to use the service i was trying to build a list of journalists because that's who we are on the show and so and yet these guys are on there and you know who else is back technically trump is back i think he's yes he can't do much through his contract and evidently the thing's going to go through for his ftc or whatever's approving that deal for him to do the bike buyout or transition or whatever the hell that's it. So one of the things that you get into in the book is basically the battle that goes on because there's a kind of an internal battle for the buyout of it.

And Elon kind of sticks right in it in a way that I don't think he realizes he he kind of he got him he got himself locked in he did yeah his timing was quite terrible and you kind of take it like the understatement of the of the century probably there but you know people you know high level just for those who may not remember right so like elon shows up he basically forces twitter to sell him the company right gives him an offer they can't refuse kind of thing he's we need to do this as fast as possible 45 million okay 44 billion dollars yeah and and then almost immediately within i'm talking within a couple weeks he realizes he's sort of locked himself into this terrible deal because the stock market is going down there's a war in

europe inflation is going up like all these these things and so he tries to back out of the deal and he tries to walk away and twitter literally sues him to force the sale right they say you signed a contract yeah you can't walk away uh we're going to bring you to court and force you to buy this company so it's just like a really interesting dynamic that you have a company demanding someone acquire them and you know that's what sets off like a summer full of legal disputes and things and like the book covers all this it's it's it's like one of those things that would almost feel like it's make-believe or or you know a movie right if it didn't actually happen in real life but it did it was really wild that whole summer of 2022 was oh yeah a bizarre thing and i think the drop in the market value i mean it

dropped it dropped huge it was like 25 million billion that it dropped to in value didn't it it was well yeah really bad taking it over so you since he's taken it over. So I'll describe it. There's not like a stock price that we can use to track the value. But some banks, I think Fidelity, for example, has cut the price by more than 50%. So they're saying, hey, you paid $44 billion for it. We now think it's worth $16 or $15 billion. It's crazy how much it's dropped in value. And he still owes as if it's a $44 billion company. So he's really on the hook for a lot of debt right now. Yeah.

And my understanding is the banks that did finance it, they will not open the purse strings again. They're like, nope, we're closed. We're done. We've written it down and we're not loaning any more money. Yeah. I mean, would you? I don't know. Yeah you? I don't know.

Yeah. So, I don't know. Yeah. Did you cover in your book, because I know you guys go to print, and so there's all sorts of crazy stuff that will always, I guess, be happening. But did you talk about in your book where he puts up his fingers to Bob Iger sitting in the audience and advertising? I was able to. I got it in the audience and advertising. I was able to, I got it in, in like a,

uh, the conclusion. So basically I, the book ends about three months after he takes over. But then I put a ton of stuff that had happened as you, as you acknowledged, like you got to turn in a book and then there's several months before people get to read it,

but there's still stuff that's going on. So I put a bunch of that, like, you know, stuff into a conclusion or an epilogue but him sitting on stage in new york and and you know telling advertisers to go f themselves was pretty crazy was a pretty crazy thing to say i've never seen anything like it especially from someone who is asking those people for advertising dollars right that's their whole business so and

he did seem like he was on something at that show. I don't know. As we talked about, there's speculation. I can't be the one. I'm not going to be the one to say it. I'll say it. He seemed like he was on something. His mannerisms and stuff were really weird, so I'll say it. It would explain it.

It's a really bizarre thing to do otherwise and then and then now you see you know how he's probably trying to raise more money through stocks and where he put tesla on the thing and my friends you know they bought the elon worship you know they've built idols to him i think i think they basically i don't know there's a couple jokes there on the fans probably but they basically idolize him and so they bought teslas and they're left-leaning political people and so you know they've been kind of whole surprised by his right wing thing do you get into what's interesting to me is his fascination with x and if you follow them like i have and you have and and other people who follow silicon valley you know you know about his right

wing friend and the paypal mafia and the fallout over x and x has been kind of like naming a company x or having an idea for a company name x has been like his citizen keen moment with rosebud where he's just been like regretting never being able to use x you know he was kicked out at paypal over it and regretting it ever since it's almost like he's been trying to find a place for this and this has been his little curmudgeon he's dragged her through some sort of abuse and and and now he's painted it onto this turd that well what he's turned into a turd in my opinion i don't know if you go through any of that in your book of of

where that originates from and Yeah, a little bit. It's almost like Rosebud, you know, the sled where he's like, where's my Rosebud? I've sort of been fascinated with this idea, as you mentioned, for a long time. I think his first startup was X.com or one of his first startups was X.com. His son is actually named X. He just has this infatuation with literally the letter X and like creating something around it. But I think more than that, you know, they're now trying quite people will be like, what do you mean? You're tweeting all the time. And I'm like, well, let me be clear. X still exists and the product still exists.

But I think what made Twitter Twitter is no longer a thing. And I think that's by design. Elon does not want Twitter to exist anymore. He bought it and buried it. And now he's hoping to rebrand everything and transform everything as this new company, right? And we see that in their messaging and otherwise. So, you know, yeah, the product itself is still a thing, but I think it feels different, as you've pointed out. And I think the goal for the company is very different than what Twitter's original goal was. And so, you

know, fast forward a year or two, I it's gonna i think it's gonna feel even more drastically different than it is today i know he's been trying to copy those apps that they have in china where yeah basically everything out yeah the everything app we're in i guess his fantasy is to do that and i guess he's instructed the coders to do that i guess do you get into that and the possibilities a little bit at the end yeah a little bit at the end. Yeah, a little bit at the end, but a lot of this is still really new. This stuff has only really started to materialize in the last couple of months, but I've covered it at Bloomberg. It's not necessarily in the book. He's trying to get into payments. He's trying to get into this idea of even banking. Maybe you would use X to hold money and they would give you some type of interest payment. It's really ambitious stuff that I'm not sure will catch on in the US, quite frankly.

There's a reason these everything apps are popular in Asia, but have not been able to tack on here in the US. Facebook has tried to do this. They've tried to do this with Messenger. They've tried to do this with Messenger. They've tried to do this with WhatsApp. The U.S. market is just really hard for this type of everything app idea. And I'm not convinced he's going to be able to do it, but at least he, you know, I guess if you want to give him credit, he's trying to do something different. I don't know. I enjoyed the old Twitter a lot. I've been wanting to see how it's transitioned. So we'll see.

I'm skeptical. You and me. You know, do you think that maybe some of the motivation was is he saw you know these billionaires they love to have their own voices especially if you're the richest person in the world and and i do you think maybe he saw you know it's kind of a william randolph hearst thing remember how hearst you know built all the newspapers and basically he was a kingmaker in politics and if you went against his newspaper or he didn't want you to be king, he was going to make it so you weren't.

And then maybe he saw how Donald Trump used it basically as his bully pulpit and he's like, hey, I want to have a voice and get my message out. Do you think there's maybe an ego that bought into that? Yeah, you think there's an maybe an ego that bought into that yeah i think i think i think it's impossible to ignore that element of it right especially when you are

as rich and powerful and famous as he is you know there's there's stories you hear about just like his fascination his fascination with his own engagement right we saw this with trump too watching the the likes pour in right and i think like there's there's some element about that with elon too is like seeing how widely distributed his own views can become if he uses x and so i don't know if that was you know it's hard to say if that was like the one thing or if that was just one of many things i tend to think it's one of many but i do think it's an element here that you can't ignore which is that he's become incredibly incredibly influential and famous even since buying the company yeah i remember when he

was upset he's like hey i'm not getting enough likes and views on my thing and i own this damn company and exactly it's like you know at this point i'm like, has he just written it off as, well, this is my megaphone, and I get to decide. I'm the decider, I guess. And so I'll just run with it. And it's been really interesting. You can see the influences of Peter Thiel, of course, and Peter Thiel's whole right-wing conservative thing that's been around since he was in stanford you know and his whole slants on stuff and and the influence i believe it was peter teal and and a couple of his other right-wing friends that actually helped push elon into the deal right david sacks was his one who was the paypal guy who's who's been super

involved some of the tesla board members and the spacex board members have sort of been advisors for him uh but there's no doubt that he has. And Elon said this as well. He's, he's politically shifted. You know, I think he used to be left, if not maybe center left.

And, and now he would say he's sort of center, right. But I, I think he's quite, you know, clearly pretty right. Pretty conservative in terms of like the things he's tweeting about,

right. With immigration, probably being like the one big one that he keeps talking about with the border crisis and things like that so um it's been interesting to see it and and the one thing that twitter does better for for good or or bad is it's it's public man so like we're seeing this evolution sort of happen in front of our very eyes because we see everything he tweets there you go and the the billionaire public square is really what it's become since donald trump i think yeah where it's you know and and they just crowd everyone out maybe taylor swift will buy it next

and i just hope she's the sweetest she always seems to come across as being but i don't know maybe she'll take her whole army of of swifties she'll shut down the Jet account that everyone hates, I guess. And then she'll, I don't know, help the cheap wins the next suit, whatever the conspiracy thing is. Yeah, so I think it's great. You've documented all this stuff. You get into the details of it. And I'm sure you'll have plenty of data for book two. I know.

Some people have been like, oh, are you going to just pick up where you left off? I'm like, I need to sleep for about two, two years before I can even consider. Oh, I mean, you just, it's going to be an endless thing.

I, I, I refuse to call it X and then, you know, and everything comes across. The email still come out as Twitter. Uh, for the longest time,

I couldn't find the app. Cause I'm like, where's this, where's the Twitter longest time, I couldn't find the app because I'm like, where's this? Where's the Twitter app? And I couldn't find it because I'm used to looking for the bird for the last 12, 20, whatever years. And so you're just and then who's it? The infamous writer for horror got into

it. I'm still calling it Twitter. Oh, yeah. Stephen King. Yeah. And you sit and you watch some of those tweets and you're like, dude, you're like the richest person on the earth. Do you not have something better to do? Yeah. And then you see how it has affected Tesla stock.

It really took the game off him too. Everybody thought that he was his home run king and infallible and everything else. And talk about ruining your image. Nothing else. Yeah. infallible and you know everything else and and talk about ruining your image nothing else yeah i think a lot of people you mentioned sort of your friends who were elon fans and have been sort of surprised i mean like i think there are a ton of people out there who maybe knew who elon was right like they certainly knew oh he's the tesla guy or the spacex guy but they didn't really know much about him and the Twitter takeover has really broadcasted his personality, but also his personal views to just so many people who I don't think

really were aware of the type of person that he was. And I think there's a lot of people who have been like, oh, he's different. He's different than I expected or that I certainly anticipated. Yeah. He's kind of on the downside like donald trump is where everything's going wrong now so i don't know it'll be it's going to be interesting to see how it turns out but like you said i i was really i i still have a romance with the old bird even though it was a clown car the shit show for most of its years but uh there you go so final thoughts as we go out kurt tell people where to buy the book and your dot coms yeah find you on the interwebs yeah yeah thank you again for having me the book

is called battle for the bird just came out yesterday so this thing is fresh and i would just say you know you don't even have to really know or care about twitter i think to find this story interesting if i if i do say so myself it's really a story it's you'll read some of the stuff and just be like i can't believe that this is and just be like, I can't believe that this is how a business was run, or I can't believe that this is how the richest person in the world sort of makes decisions or behaves. I think it's like an interesting business story regardless of how you feel about Twitter. So I hope people will give it a shot. There you go. And someone in the audience is asking, is it on Audible yet? It is on Amazon. You can order it there. All that good stuff.

Thank you very much, Kirk, for coming on. We really appreciate it, man. Get some sleep, buddy. I got two little kids, too, so it doesn't happen all that often. We've got to do all this book promotion stuff now. Continued success, my friend. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you.

Thanks for getting it now. Someone's picking you right up off Audible. That's amazing. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in.. Someone's picking it right up off Audible. That's amazing. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com for Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com for Chris Voss. All those crazy places on the internet. And we're also on Twitter. Rex on the Chris Voss Show 1 because the Chris Voss Show got suspended

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