Elon Musk’s private texts about buying Twitter have been revealed
Elon Musk’s appearance in front of a US court over his ongoing battle with Twitter may be a few weeks away, but we’ve got something to whet the appetite.
A cache of the billionaire’s private texts have been revealed as part of the discovery process and it makes for interesting reading.
Among other influential figures, Musk had contact with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and Parag Agrawal – the current CEO of the social media platform.
And the messages, revealed in a court filing, don’t paint a flattering picture.
The messages include the moment Musk tells Agrawal he wants to buy Twitter and take it private, rather than just join the board. A decision he later backtracked on, which is what led to this mess in the first place.
Giving a behind-the-scenes look at how the relationship between Musk and Agrawal went south.
Agrawal wrote: ‘You are free to tweet “is Twitter dying?” or anything else about Twitter – but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context.
‘Next time we speak, I’d like to you provide you [sic] perspective on the level of the internal distraction right now and how it [sic] hurting our ability to do work.’
To which Musk responds, less than a minute later: ‘What did you get done this week? I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.’
Following this exchange, Twitter’s Bret Taylor, the chair of the board, got in touch to tell Elon that ‘fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won’t work.’
Musk then fires back: ‘Drastic action is needed. This is hard to do as a public company, as purging fake users will make the numbers look terrible, so restructuring should be done as a private company. This is Jack’s opinion too.’
Invoking Dorsey in the back-and-forth shows the relationship between Twitter’s outspoken co-founder and the richest man in the world.
Dorsey, amusingly saved as ‘jack jack’ in Musk’s phone, stated publicly in April that ‘Elon is the singular solution’.
He appeared to back this up in private, messaging Musk: ‘I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work.’
Dorsey then appeared to try and play mediator between Agrawal and Musk, setting up a three-way virtual meeting.
Which apparently didn’t go well.
‘You and I are in complete agreement,’ Musk messaged Dorsey privately. ‘Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does.’
Dorsey responded: ‘At least it became clear that you can’t work together.’
‘That was clarifying.’
Aside from the business wrangling, the tranche of messages from Musk also reveal he got some backing from Joe Rogan.
‘I REALLY hope you get Twitter,’ Rogan texted on the 23rd of March.
‘If you do, we should throw a hell of a party.’
To which Musk replied with the 100 emoji.
Rogan added that he hoped Musk would ‘liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob.’
The billionaire replied: ‘I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow.’
Musk and Twitter have each sued the other over the deal and are heading to a five-day trial starting on October 17.
While Musk wants out, Twitter is hoping that the court will order him to buy the company for the agreed $54.20 per share.
Dozens of depositions are scheduled in the case, including Agrawal, as each side questions witnesses and gathers evidence to make its case.
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