The Daily Beast Podcast - The Thing That Will Be the Final ‘Death Knell’ for Musk’s X

Episode Date: December 10, 2023

Ed Zitron, CEO of media and public relations group EZPR, tells The New Abnormal’s Andy Levy that Elon Musk is driving the platform formally known as Twitter into the ground and is one step away from it going completely under. Plus! The New Abnormal team lampoons new House Speaker, and “wee little psychopath” Mike Johnson, who believes that God told him to be Speaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Ed Zitrin of the newsletter, Where's Your Ed at? And he's going to tell us all about what he sees coming in Elon Musk's future and it's not looking so hot. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips.

Clips. All right. Let's start out with something fun. Here we have Andy's declared dumbest man in cable news, Jesse Waters, interviewing presidential candidate one RFK Jr. Who you may remember from being a bat-shin-crazy anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists. Many people don't remember this, but Jesse actually kicked off his career as a gotcha journalist for Bill O'Reilly, but was frequently humiliated by being very bad at his job, as he still

is many years later. I'll say, he found his mark, and this one's pretty good. ever on Jeffrey Epstein's jet, were you? I was on Jeffrey Epstein's jet two times. I was on it in 1993, and I went to Florida with my wife and two children to visit my mom over Easter. My wife had some kind of relationship with Glenn Maxwell, and they offered us a ride to Palm Beach. So I went then, and on another occasion, I flew again with my family, with, I think, four of my children and marry my wife to Rapid City, South Dakota, to go fossil hunting

for a weekend. But otherwise, I was never on his jet alone. I've been very open about this from the beginning. This was in 93, so it was 30 years ago. It was before anybody knew about Jeffrey Epstein's, you know, his nefarious issues. And I agree with you that these, all of this information should be released. And we should get real answers on what happened to Jeffrey Epstein and any of the high-level political people that he was involved with. All of that should be open to the public. It should be absolutely transparent. And, you know, I don't see why any of those records would have any redactions.

And why would we be hiding that from the American public? My favorite thing is, is you can lie by omission. But truly, I would never fault anyone for lying by omission that you brought your children around Jeffrey Epstein. That and your wife has some type of good relationship with Just Lane. Like what? Did she introduce the two of you? That's the fucking question that popped into my mind as soon as he said it. This feels like getting ahead of a story that doesn't exist.

Was anyone talking about RFK Jr. and Jeffrey Epstein? No one in my circles. I mean, maybe they were and I just haven't been paying attention. But this just feels like, you know, tweet, you know, I flew with Jeffrey Epstein on a plane twice as answering a lot of, you know, questions. that haven't been asked or whatever. But yeah, this is just, I mean, that was just deeply weird. And then also the, you never did the thing that you did twice, did you? Great questions, Jesse.

Keep them coming. But it is funny that he, like he specifically said, I was there with my wife and my kids to try to, you know, to make it clear that he wasn't doing any shenanigans. But yeah, oh, you're a real good judge of character, bringing your kids around, Jeff. Okay, so as we taped this on Thursday last night, there was one of the most stupid debates in the history of these Republican debates, which have been really fucking stupid. But throughout the Republican primary, we've even told that Governor Nikki Hillie is the sane, rational one on the stage, which we have known is also grading on a curve of epic proportions. But if this is the best they got, whew, boy, are they fucked. We do need to ban TikTok once and for all. And let me tell you why.

For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok, every day, they become 17% more anti-Semitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that. We now know that 50% of adults, 18 to 25, think that Hamas was warranted at what they did with Israel. That's a problem. Isn't her daughter on TikTok? Oh, yeah. Like, isn't that what, like, everybody's just like, don't talk about our kids, but, like, isn't that fact? I'm so tired of these politicians making, yes, do I believe that social media has adverse effects on people, blah, blah, yeah. But making TikTok the boogeyman in the room when I'm just like, but you all don't really want to take any of the, oh, I don't know, meta or anything else to task.

And the idea that you're going to ban this and, oh, it's China. I'm just, I'm so sick of their bullshit. You know what makes people 30% probably more anti-Semitic listening to Fox? just putting that up there. That might be an understatement. It's interesting because when I first heard this, I thought she just made that up. But it's even worse because she didn't just make it up. What she did was misrepresent a study that was done.

The study found that spending 30 minutes a day on TikTok increases the chance that someone holds anti-Semitic or anti-Israel views by 17%. So there's two things here. One is she said every 30 minutes. Mm-hmm. That's not true because if you look at that exponentially, that would mean if they were on TikTok for six hours, they would be like a million percent more anti-Semitic. It would basically mean every week I am Hitler because that's how much time I spend there. Yes, which granted Danielle and I have our questions.

Okay, okay. But for different reasons. It's more of a Mussolini, I think, type thing. But so she completely butchered that. And then the important part there also is anti-Semitic or anti-Israel views. Those are not the same thing. Despite what Congress wants us to think, there are people who are anti-Israel who are not anti-Semitic.

There are people who are pro-Israel who are anti-Semitic. So let's stop conflating those two things. She didn't even try. She just left out the or anti-Israel thing. I would have preferred she just made that number up instead of absolutely butchering this study that honestly I don't even know if this how reputable this one study is but at least get it right like I'm just I'm so sick of these people is there more jesse there's always more come on well here we have a man I like to call the human skin tag

aka Steve bannon who is expected to be running shop for Trump in his next term and he's talking to cash Patel about what will happen to journalists like us in Trump's second term highly confident that when you go back and is a senior member of this administration, President Trump's administration, starting in the afternoon of the 20th of January of 2025, do you feel confident that you will be able to deliver the goods, that we can have serious prosecutions and accountability? And I want the morning show producers that watch us and all the producers to watch us. This is just not rhetoric.

We're absolutely dead serious. You cannot have a constitutional republic. and allow what these deep staters have done to the country. The deep state, the administrative state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned in the Constitution, is going to be taken apart brick by brick. And the people that did these evil deeds will be held accountable and prosecuted, criminal prosecutions. Cash, I know you're probably going to be head of the CIA, but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order of the first couple of months

so we can get rolling on prosecutions? Yes, we got the bench for it, Bannon, and you know those guys. I'm not going to go out there and say their names right now so the radical left-wing media can terrorize them. But, excuse me, the one thing we learned in the Trump administration the first go around is we got to put in all America patriots top to bottom. And we got them for law enforcement. We got them for intel collection. We got them for offensive operations. We got them for DOD, CIA everywhere.

And the one thing we will do that they never will do is we will follow the facts and the law and go to courts of law. and correct these justices and lawyers who have been prosecuting these cases based on politics and actually issuing them as lawfare. We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you. Cute.

Head of the CIA. Just let that sink in. We've had a lot of psychotic heads of CIA, but none quite like him. That is true. That's true. That is true. The CIA, which, by the way, is forbidden from operating on U.S. soil. You know?

I can't imagine Cashmette who cares about that. I mean, they might as well have been wearing shirts that just said, I am a fascist. Yeah. I mean, this is some of the most overt comments I've heard on this terrible podcast that I occasionally listen to clips of. Talking about the new abnormal? I listen to the podcast while we tape it, thank you very much. Oh, okay. Good to know.

Was it on your Spotify list? I don't use Spotify to listen to the podcast. Thank you very much. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. They're saying all the quiet parts out loud, like that we know what they plan to do. Networks will be shut down. Trump said that he was going to go after MSNBC, NBC and others.

Papers will be shut and how they'll do it when folks say, oh, no, that can never happen, blah, blah, all you do is just bombard outlets with investigations. Bombard them with investigations, pulling people into testify, scaring the shit out of everyone until they either fall in line or they fall apart. Those are going to be the two choices that will happen

under a Trump 2.0 that will go on for as long as Orange Jesus breathes. Every accusation they make is what's in their heart. And you could just listen to his answer there. And he said, everything he is accusing the quote-unquote deep state of doing now, which in reality, what they're pissed about is going after the January 6th people and prosecuting them. But every accusation he made against the deep state in that little monologue about politicizing the law and going after

patriotic Americans, et cetera, that's exactly what they want to do. It's more of the same and we can't say we weren't warned. Yeah. Well, I hope we're all really close in ourselves together. What? What? That's not funny? In Gitmo? No. No.

Wait, I don't get it. They said they're going to jail journalists. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. He's hoping that ourselves will be close together. Oh, ourselves. I thought you said ourselves. Not like molecules, but like cells. Right.

No, I misheard. I misheard. We could just do the podcast from Gitmo and just among ourselves. And Jesse, you'll have to act out the clips. I like that idea. We could put out a little prison plays. Yeah, exactly. This will be so fun for us.

Yeah, in between waterboarding. Okay. Basley, I want to talk about a wee little fellow, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who's more than a wee little psychopath. Here he is, he's giving Mike Pence, as he talks about what he believes he was put in the Speaker of House position to do.

The Lord told me very clearly to prepare and be ready, and be ready for what? Okay, I don't know. We're coming to a Red Sea moment. What does that mean, Lord? and then when the speaker's race happened and kevin McCarthy who's a dear friend of mine was deposed vacated from the chair oh wow well this is what the lord may have been preparing us for and so i started praying more about that and then the lord began to wake me up through this three-week

process we're in in the middle of night and and to speak to me and to write things down plans and procedures and ideas on how we could pull the conference together now at the time i assumed the Lord is going to choose a new Moses and oh thank you the Lord Lord you're going to allow me to be Aaron to Moses and so I I worked to get Steve Scalese elected speaker that didn't happen and then Jim Jordan who's like another big brother of mine no that didn't happen and Tom Emmer and you know ultimately 13 people ran for the for the post and the Lord kept telling me to wait wait wait so I waited I waited and then at the end when it came to the end the Lord said now step forward me I'm just to be Aaron No, the Lord said step forward. Oh, God. I wish I don't put that in. That's crazy. That is crazy.

He's not speaking to you. He's not. Like, oh, my God. I think there's only one proper follow-up for journalists next time they ask him a question, which is, what was the Lord telling you when he told you to have your son monitor, your masturbation? Oh, my God. That's, I mean, that is it. That's the follow-up.

Yeah, I guess the next time I wake up with heartburn in the middle of the night, I'm just going to say it was the Lord. It's funny, the ward was speaking to me about 6 a.m. this morning. I didn't realize it was him. These people are, I mean, I don't know. Nuts doesn't begin to explain it. No, I mean, they are. They're psychotic.

And it just, it can't be overstated how psychotic they are. And this is the Republican Party. This is the whole party. Well, he has to pass a nominibus bill, but I haven't read the Bible at like 20-something years. So I don't quite remember what this is going to be like. But I think prophecy is going to fail him pretty bad when the sea doesn't part sued for this omnibus bill.

Elon Musk has had himself a bit of a month, what with his anti-Semitic posts on Twitter, the advertiseration on that platform that has followed, the weird Andrew Ross Sorkin interview, in which, among other things he told companies go fuck yourself, the beginning of the rollout of the deeply weird AI chatbot GROC, and the reveal of the pricing for the hideous Tesla cyber truck. Here to tell us what he thinks this all means for Musk's future is the CEO of EasyPR, writer of the tremendous substack,

where's your Ed at, and the occasional business insider column, and host of the 15 Minutes in Hell podcast, Ed Zitron. Ed, thank you so much for being here. Hello, how you doing? I'm doing well, Thank you. So you wrote a very long, very excellent piece at your substack called Elon's Gordian nod. And I want to walk through it a bit. Let's start with the advertisers fleeing Twitter. You say that what's astonishing is how long it took advertisers to finally walk away. So what made them do so now? So at that point, what I think everybody really needs to realize is Musk has been terrible for years. He sent a huge dog pile of people and basically ruined Aaron Bieber, who is a science writer, ruined her life by sending hundreds, thousands of

people after her on Twitter Shrewart piece, actually on The Daily Beast about this. And for years, he's been awful. But what sent them over the edge here is he has generally been quite good at saying the quiet part quietly, as opposed to responding with, exactly, to some insane anti-Semitic nonsense. What's also been lost is that he made an exceedingly weird, quite racist post that I almost don't want to describe. It involved African American men and it was truly awful. That's just disappeared from everywhere. But it became inconvenient to back Musk now. They didn't really care before. He's been awful for a year. Everyone's seen it. He unbanned multiple white supremacists. He sent Andrew Tate tens of thousands of dollars. That wasn't a problem. But him being just nakedly anti-Semitic

responding with, you've said the truth or something along those lines to a truly insane anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. That was the moment because it just, you can't associate with that anymore. not everyone knows that's bad versus the other stuff where almost everybody knew it was bad, but not bad enough to hit the C-suite. There was an article in like April saying that McDonald's or maybe Colgate, one of the major CMOs, was worried about Musk's racist rhetoric. They didn't quit then. There have been reports about advertisers leaving, but what happened here was just it became inconvenient. Are these companies coming back anytime soon? Because they use this word, you know, they always say we're pausing our advertising, which I understand why they're using that.

But how long is this pause going to be, do you think? It really depends heavily on how Musk reacts. So a day or two ago, there was New York Times piece that suggested that these advertisers is not coming back this time. You're right. They always say pause, Apple, pause, IBM pause. But this time, they've had to just pause and probably stop forever because it's two things. One, association with this is extremely bad.

But two, Twitter makes up this incredibly small amount of advertising spend. So it's not even like they're losing that much. So it's just, it's a convenient time to flush the toilet for them. Yeah, and another thing you point out that's interesting, and I don't think is getting a lot of coverage, is a bunch of these companies that have stopped their advertising have also stopped posting on Twitter. Yes. And that will be the real death now for Twitter. I think that what will kill this website truly is if sports leaves it.

If there is ever a compelling, if Blue Sky or Threads can truly capture the shit posting of the sports realm, Twitter is over. It's done. Because right now, really Blue Sky needs video. If Blue Sky had video, I think it would be a compelling competitor. And Threads is awful, which is the only advantage that X, Twitter, rate my nudes top is, whatever it's called at the moment, is that actually has. So, but if they're stopping posting, that is genuinely very bad because as horrible as it is to consider, most people on social networks want to follow a bunch of brands. They want to see what the latest brand has to say about brand things. It's strange and it feels when you see these posts and you see people interacting with them sincerely, it feels like you've entered a new world that you don't like.

But that is how social media works. If these brands just give up on posting, I mean, that's bad. But really, I do mean it. It is going to be the sports. It's going to be the live reaction things that kill this website. No, I think that's absolutely right because you and I both see it on blue sky. I mean, every day I see people saying, if only we could get the sports people over here. Right. And I think you're right, because it's that immediate reaction and it's the sense of the sort of the shared camaraderie that everyone is watching the big game together or whatever. It's shared camaraderie, low stakes, high energy versus news where it's at times high stakes, high energy, quite exhausting. But sports, you can be mad at and then go on with your day. It doesn't

materially affect your life unless you're, I don't know, a Raiders fan like me. You're a Metz fan. It's just a continual pain cycle. Yeah. No, that's a great point about the sports. Let's talk about Grock. The name Musk has chosen for his, I don't know, anti-woke, unwoke, AI chatbot. How is this monstrosity being rolled out and how is it being trained? So what's funny about GROC is it's not obvious how it's being rolled out. It was meant to roll out this week. We're recording them on a Friday. It's rolled out to some people who subscribe to premium plus on X, the Everything app. Allegedly, you're meant to get it. And it's based on when you registered.

I don't think there's any actual rhyme or reason. It's Elon Musk. There isn't. And I've seen a few very small accounts get it. Accounts created fairly recently. So I think it's kind of randomized. So apparently, Grok is trained on a real-time and existent feed of Twitter posts. It is the drill post about, oh, you've read a bunch of books.

Well, I've read thousands of posts. That is GROC. Right. So I'm not sure how bad GROC will be, and I have yet to have access to it, but this is a large language model trained on posts. I imagine it's trained on something else, but it is trained on posts. And a few days ago, when I wrote a piece, I noticed someone had posted about a British MP being suspended from Parliament or expelled from Parliament. Didn't happen. And that was one of the major posts that someone made from GROC about what is the news today.

If that is what we're going to see from this thing, it is going to be hilarious. hilariously bad, but also hilariously expensive for Elon Musk to run. Well, yeah, and that's my next question, because you point out the sheer cost of something like this. How expensive is it to train and maintain and run something like rock? So large language models are extremely expensive to run, and they require a GPU, kind of like you'd find in a gaming PC, but there are now specialized ones focused on AI calculations. I'm not a mathematician. I'm quite bad at it. But anywho, an analyst called Dylan Patel, estimate that chat GPT cost around $700,000 a day to run. And that was on 28,000 GPUs. This was

analysis from February, 23. Two months later, Elon Musk purchased 10,000 GPUs, which is about just a little bit over a third of what chat GPT uses. Now, chat GPT, heavily optimized run by people who actually, they have a full staff, unlike Twitter, where Musk fired most of them. Now, assuming that Grok costs, I don't know, a quarter of what chat GPT costs, that's still like $170,000 a day. And Musk has fired most of the people who do server optimization. So just to be clear, for those listeners who haven't really like spent much time on Twitter in the last year, the site has got worse. It is kind of weirdly broken all the time. So just to be clear, same staff plus XAI, which is Musk's AI company that runs GROC,

is going to be optimizing this bot. So this thing is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day and get more expensive as more people use it. It is an inverse revenue model and I'm not sure people understand how funny that is. It costs $16 a month and that might even be if you pay annually for premium plus to get access to GROC. So this thing, people are going to be hitting it constantly because they want to prove the daddy must that they love their products. This thing is just going to be so expensive and probably not well optimized and probably broken in material ways that require further maintenance. It's just one of the funniest and worst ideas I've heard from an already bad guy, from a CEO or whatever Musk claims to be at Twitter now, who has had zero good

ideas so far. And this may be the dumbest one. It's so funny. And that's really interesting how you put it where basically the more it's used, the more it costs. Yes. It's sort of the opposite of scale, I guess, in that sense, in that the larger it gets and the more people that subscribe and the more people that use it, the more money it's actually going to cost Musk. And that's the thing that people don't realize about all of these companies, all of these AI companies, they're unprofitable. Open AI is on course to make a billion dollars this year. Notice that none of these stories say the word profit because there is none. Now, of course, non-profit company OpenAI. Twitter is also a.com.

a non-profit, not legally, but just in the way it works. Because he is putting Grog in there clearly as a marketing cost. Okay, I'm going to spend this so that people subscribe, but that also requires them to get value out of it. And I just don't think that this is going to provide enough value to get many new subscribers. And if it does, it's going to be insanely expensive. And when does this put them in the green exactly? What is the point? Is it because he bought these GPUs in. in, let's say March April, because the story from Business Insider saying he bought 10,000 GPUs came out about April. That means that he probably has very similar gear to Open AI. NVIDIA is releasing new AI chips next year, so he's already behind the curve.

Right. So I just, it's awesome because it's the kind of thing where had he done this in 2019, everyone would be like, wow, that's a really smart idea. But people are now intimately aware that you kind of need to make more money than you spend in tech now, which is crazy idea. came up with. And he's just going to burn money at a time when it's already burning money. Twitter is already bleeding money. And it's just, it's a very must idea just because it is smart seeming, but when you think about it for one minute, it's quite stupid. Twitter is disintegrating. Grock is burning through money. And in your piece, you predict that musk sanity will deteriorate as things continue to sour at Twitter in parallel with what you call the disastrous launch of

Tesla's cyber truck next year. So my first question is, why truck so ugly, Ed? Why truck so ugly? Well, he must have been playing another world or flashback, classic PC games, because it looks like this horrible polygonal monstrosity. Yeah. And Daniel Golson over inside EVs, he went and actually saw one, like a, basically a release candidate one. It looks so bad. Huge gaps in the panel. Huge, just like, it's not just ugly. It's very poorly made. And you've really really, you've really really got that problem to start with, but also it's not a good truck. You can't even fit a bicycle in the back of it. If you close the truck bed on it, you can't see out the rearview mirror. Yeah, that's amazing. So you have to use the camera. It's three, four years late. They said it would be

coming out in 2020, 2019. It's now 2023. Won't be out until next year. And if you want the cheapest one, it won't be out until 2025. It's just amazing. And on top of that, there are like multiple other competitors. You've got Rivian, you've got Ford. You've got, I think Chevy might have. one. And then you have the problem that EVs are no longer selling that well, and there's not that much demand for electric trucks. So all of these things considered, it's also a bad vehicle. It looks terrible. Marcus Brownlee, MKBHD, he should be goddamn ashamed of himself, 45 minute long video, and you can see him avoiding trying to say negative things. But even he is like, oh, it's so roomy in the back, and it's not. I used to have a Ford F-150, and they are so roomy in the back. This thing has about

the amount of space in the back as like a basic crossover SUV. It's not built for people who use trucks. So it's not going to sell to people who want trucks. And then it's only going to sell to weirdos. Weirdos who want bulletproof vehicles. It's not even bulletproof. They shot it with, like a Tommy gun. So they could dent it. Didn't see him shoot it with like a two, two, three, because that thing will pierce right through that stainless steel piece of shit. Yeah. So the last section of your piece is headed the end of Elon and you say that you believe the next year will begin the collapse of his empire and you say something that I thought was really, really interesting. You say if only because he is utterly incapable of admitting he's wrong. Talk about why you think

that aspect of his personality will end up being destructive. So with Tesla, for example, Tesla is a business that sells stuff. You have a thing that you sell. He can be noxious off in the corner or online and it's like that doesn't get in the way of the functionality of Tesla as a company. His face is not on the vehicle. You don't have to deal with Elon Musk when you put it up. He isn't chattering away at you. So you could theoretically just sell the sizzle with that, be like, oh, Tesla's releasing a new robot and then the stock goes up and everyone's happy. Sure, you can do that. The problem is with Twitter is you can't do that. The only way to fix Twitter right now, and I really mean this, is for him to leave and never return. He needs to borderline

delete his account, he needs to walk away, and he needs to give it to Magic Johnson or someone, someone completely inoffensive. But he won't do it because he can't admit that every choice he's made has been bad. He blames everyone for his problems other than himself. Even the anti-Semitic comment. He said it was bad, but then didn't delete it and then told the advertisers to go fuck himself. He doesn't care. He doesn't feel bad. And because of that, he can't fix Twitter. He just can't fix it. He isn't capable of saying, I don't know how to run a social network. Because social networks, by the way, are really bad businesses, just in general and also very delicate ones. You'll notice all the Twitter files, the least exciting conspiracy theory of all time.

Every single conversation internally at Twitter was everyone going, I don't know if we should do anything because every time you touch a social network, everyone goes insane. And everyone going, hmm, Musk changes everything all the time and doesn't realize that breaks the whole thing. He fires everyone. He just, he can't sit there and say, oh man, I really fucked up. this is really bad. So it's going to get worse. He owes a billion dollars a year in interest on this deal to the banks who can't sell the debt. So they're not going anywhere. They're going to expect that

money. His only chance is to renegotiate the debt. Why would they do that? They won't do it. They're not interested. Why would they possibly renegotiate? They get a billion dollars from this idiot. And the general thing is, how does he make his way out of this? Twitter is burning a hole in his pocket. He may be the richest man alive, but guess what? He doesn't have unlimited funds. He will have to sell Tesla stock. Or he could take SpaceX public, but that I think isn't possible before 2027. It's 2023. It's soon going to be 2024. What the hell does he do the next few years? He could get more loans, but he's clearly desperate enough for cash that he had to borrow a billion dollars from SpaceX to buy Twitter. At some point, this has to fall apart. He has to fall apart. He

has to find new money. He is already trying to raise a billion dollars for XAI. He's claiming that ex-Twitter stockholders will own 25% of XAI. I don't even know how that's legally possible, but even if it is, I would not want to buy stock in XAI if I thought 25% of the stock was shared with the idiots who bought him in the last scam. Right. And so he is massively over-leverage here. Twitter cannot turn a profit under him or really anyone. I think they've had two profitable quarters in history, maybe. And that's the thing. This was already a crap business.

He already overpaid for it. So he might bankrupt it. And if he bankrupts it, that will turn into one of the most insane bankruptcy cases you've ever seen. We will see some emails that you will not believe. I reckon there's some insane shit he said. And all of this is a result of the fact that he can't just say, oh, I don't have the expertise here. Can someone else who understands this run this for me? He can't do it.

He just hasn't got the ability. Linda Yakorino is sitting there saying, Tuesday's the day after Monday every day. Or like, hot dog is a sandwich or not a sandwich. What do you think? No pole. And he's just got this weird rickety company. He's got Tesla, which is still going,

but he's bet the farm on this terrible product, the cyber truck, that's years late, way too expensive. And he's got XAI, which is a large language model released after all of the good ones. that's trained on the world's least reliable data source, a data source he made less reliable and makes less reliable every goddamn day. How can anyone not see this as a death spiral? I know it's ridiculous to think of the richest man alive going broke, but it's possible here. I for one am excited. Yeah, no, it'll be absolutely fun to watch. And I don't have time to ask you about this, but you do make a really good point at the end of your piece where you say you just hope there's not a lot

of collateral damage as he crashes down. And it got me thinking about all the government contracts he has and everything and how severe that collateral damage could actually be. Ed, thanks so much for joining us. People go out and subscribe to Where's Your Ed at on Substack. It's full of excellent analysis several times a week and check out Ed's podcast 15 minutes in hell. Ed, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production. by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder.

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