Santa Fe New Mexican

Erratic visionary Musk revels in contradict­ion

Billionair­e’s whims raise questions on Twitter’s future, if deal even goes through

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As the uproar over Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter reaches a crescendo, another Musk drama, still chaotic four years after it began, has been back in court.

Ironically, that spectacle started with a Musk tweet about doing an audacious deal. Then, with Wall Street awaiting his next move, the Tesla CEO changed directions, admitting that his plan to buy all the electric car maker’s stock might be too much trouble. As regulators prepared to sue the billionair­e for defrauding investors, he pondered his position in the corporate universe in a livestream­ed interview while puffing on pot.

The episode made for a confoundin­g, but now familiar, study in both Musk’s manic ambition and his delight in contradict­ion.

It’s no wonder then that, as the world’s richest man pursues a Twitter takeover described by one investment firm as veering “from comical to surreal,” even those who’ve watched him for years remain flummoxed about what he has up his sleeve.

“This is a guy who’s more transparen­t than 99.99 percent of other CEOs, and yet he’s harder to predict because he has the confidence to be able to publicly change his mind,” said Erik Gordon, a business and law professor at the University of Michigan.

“Would Musk be more successful if he toned it down? I think the answer is no, because he wouldn’t be Musk.”

This week Musk is again keeping people guessing. First, he embraced a European measure to keep hate speech and misinforma­tion off social media. Less than 24 hours later, he announced that he’d reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump, who was kicked off the platform for inciting violence.

Meanwhile, doubt remains about whether Musk will even go through with the deal. He could still walk away by paying Twitter a $1 billion terminatio­n fee, a huge figure yet a fraction of his total fortune.

But if the 50-year-old Musk’s gambit has made anything clear, it’s that he thrives on contradict­ion. Musk boasts that he’s acquiring Twitter to defend freedom of speech. But he has long used the platform to attack perceived foes who dare to disagree with him.

He is supremely confident in his own judgment and abilities. But he has openly acknowledg­ed vulnerabil­ities, disclosing his angst over a breakup in a 2017 interview with Rolling Stone and telling a Saturday Night Live audience last year that he was the show’s first host with Asperger’s syndrome.

He’s a brilliant visionary, widely admired for reimaginin­g what a car can be, not to mention his ventures in rocket travel, solar energy, computeriz­ed brain implants and constructi­ng a network of undergroun­d tunnels.

But his apparent joy in trashing the convention­s of corporate behavior has alienated analysts, regulators, employees and others unsure what to make of him.

Even Musk seems to get that many people don’t get him.

“I don’t think you’d necessaril­y want to be me,” he told podcaster Joe Rogan in the 2018 interview during which the CEO, wearing an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt, took a drag on a blunt stuffed with tobacco and marijuana.

“I think people wouldn’t like it that much. It’s very hard to turn it off.”

That combinatio­n of intellect, will and the power of enormous wealth thrill some and scare others. Either way, Musk — whose 92 million followers on Twitter rivals major celebritie­s like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga — is impossible to ignore.

Musk, whose account has the sixth-highest number of followers, has posted more than 17,000 times, according to Socialtrac­ker, often long after the workday is over. He’s suggested that some of those tweets are composed under the influence of red wine, vintage records and the sleeping pill Ambien.

“Some people use their hair to express themselves,” he’s said. “I use Twitter.”

 ?? PATRICK PLEUL/ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO ?? Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the March opening of a Tesla factory in Grünheide, Germany. Many people are puzzled on what a Musk takeover of Twitter would mean for the company and even whether he’ll go through with the deal.
PATRICK PLEUL/ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the March opening of a Tesla factory in Grünheide, Germany. Many people are puzzled on what a Musk takeover of Twitter would mean for the company and even whether he’ll go through with the deal.

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