This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. Ben Mezrick is a New York Times bestselling author.
You might remember The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the screenplay for
the Social Network, also Bringing Down the House. His newest creation, breaking
Twitter, Alon Musk, and the most controversial corporate takeover ever in history.
I want to start Ben Mesick with why was it the most controversial takeover?
Well, I mean, first of all, it's at the center of our
global conversation. So we had a man who had built rocket shifts and automatic
cars come in through the front door carrying a sink like a barbarian at the
gate, a reluctant barbarian because he didn't want to be there. He had
been food and forced into it and started trashing the place. And so because
of what Twitter is, it's immediately the biggest sort of loud thing in the
corporate world, and he made a disaster of it. He was forced into
it. You say, was it buyer's remorse when he started the process.
Yeah, he came in with the noble ideal that he was going to save
the world from this woke mind virus. He really believed that there needed to
be a place for freedom of speech and that Twitter was moderating too much.
But he made this incredibly large offer, which was forty four billion dollars fifty
four to twenty a share, and it was way more than the value of
Twitter. And he got pushed back immediately from all of the Tesla faithful because
they realized he was going to have to sell Tesla stock and he regretted.
He didn't want to go through with it, so he tried to get out,
and he said there were too many bots on the site, and Twitter
sued him, so he had not wanted to actually take it over anymore.
He had buyer's remorse for sure, and did Twitter wanted the money I gather
that's why they were willing to sell. I mean, it was so much.
It was such a huge valueuation that they did wanted to make him.
You know, it would have been the board had to make him do it,
honestly, because it would have been against their own interests and not.
So they forced him in. And then he was so angry when he came
through the doors that he reacted intensely. He started firing everybody with cause,
trying to not pay anybody bonuses. He wanted to restructure everything rather than just
fixing sort of the idea that it was being too moderated, and he makes
mistake after a mistake that things start to spiral out of control. But the
bigger story to me is that Elon didn't just break Twitter, but Twitter broke
Elon because he starts to get an incredible pushback from basically half the country,
and it's the first time in his life where he's sensing that people don't like
him, and this hits him very hard. Is Alon And we're talking to
Ben Mesurick of the New York Times bestselling Arthur His newest book is Breaking Twitter
Elon Musk and the most controversial corporate takeover in history. Was he like a
child having a temper tantrum. I mean there's some extent it's like that.
I mean, he's a guy who lives in memes and jokes. He's got
a very sort of vicious sense of humor, and he gets what he wants.
But it's more that he sees the entire world as a simulation that he's
the main playing character in and all of us are non playing characters, and
so it's the main character in his own video game upset that all of the
little people are set at him. So there is something childish about it,
but it's really built into who he is and how he acts. It's that
he really thinks he's the most important thing in the story and people should not
be standing up to him. We're talking to Ben Mezrich and the new book
is breaking Twitter now. In some ways people thought, okay, Twitter was
getting a bit big for its bridges and needed somebody to knock it down a
couple notches. Yeah, I mean, it's totally fair to say that Twitter,
first of all, was a bloated company. It had a huge number
of employees who didn't do anything. There were people taking three days a week
off. There were people who were more upset about the smoothie bar being taken
away at work, and they were about anything going on Twitter, and it
was moditoring the heck out of like right wing conservative voices. There was no
question that, you know, the New York Post posting about Hunter Biden's laptop
has suddenly you know, moderated and suspended. The Babylon Bee was thrown out
from making a joke that maybe was a bad joke, but you know,
there were things like that going on that I think was isolating people who had
a certain point of view. So he came in for probably the right reasons,
but he found very quickly that free speech is incredibly complex and if you
just let it go, you end up chasing all the advertisers away because it's
there's a lot of really, there's a lot of teenagers. The bottom line
is, if you dig deep into any social media site, you're going to
find some teenager in his basement, and that's someone who needs to usually be
moderated. He's confessed to having been diagnosed with Aspergers or at least is on
some part of that spectrum. What do you think that had anything or what
effect that had to do with all of this? Yeah, I mean he
calls himself on the spectrum. I think that he definitely does not see social
interaction the same way most people do. I think there's something similar with him
in Zuckerberg in that respect, but Elon lashes out a lot more. I
mean, I think he's definitely one of those people who uses humor and uses
his charisma and his size to get past that. He doesn't really understand how
social interaction works, but he does. He is aware of how hyper intelligent
he is. I mean, he's incredibly brilliant and he knows it. And
he also is very charismatic. I mean, if you put him in front
of advertisers, they love him. But then he goes back to his room
and at two in the morning tweets something horrible and they realize they can't go
anywhere near him. So he needs to rain in the sort of toxic side.
But he really doesn't want to, and I don't think he has.
He's the richest man in the world. So unfortunately Twitter is becoming like his
yacht, his plaything that he's going to sort of crash into the breaking Twitter.
Ben Mezerick is with us Alon Musk in the most controversial corporate takeover in
history. The way you describe Alon Musk, he sounds a lot like and
has a lot in common with Donald Trump. Well, it's kind of amazing
that we're having that conversation. And I agree that it seems like, you
know, Elon doesn't like Donald Trump. He's someone was not going to support
Donald Trump. But there are a lot of similarities in terms of how he's
running Twitter. And how he's responding to critics and uh and it's interesting.
It's a little scary, but I think that Elon, you know, has
that authoritaryan kind of mindset, especially at his companies. So yeah, well,
I you say it's it's it's scary, but it's scary in a dark
comedy kind of way. Yeah. I mean it is a comic story.
If you read the book, Thing Efterything happens that is just completely bizarre and
hilarious. Uh and and you know it's it's the oddest and most complex takeover
you've ever seen. Smoothie bar. Huh. I count myself lucky if we
have a candy bowl in the middle of the conference room floor. I know
you got to you gotta get that smoothie bar. I would like a smoothie
bar. They used to have a coffee machine, a latte machine that would
draw pictures of Jack Dorsey, the former CEO in the phone. That's great.
Yeah, Ben Mesick is with us. And the name of the book
is Breaking Twitter. Elon Musk and the most controversial corporate takeover in history.
What what's the future of of now X does or or does em? Yeah,
I mean he's turning it into this everything app, so he's kind of
walking away from his original view of making it the most true place on the
Internet in this global town hall. It's really becoming the chat room of this
big other thing. And he's talked about putting dating on it. He's turked
about turning it into a payment app. He's got Ai running around it now,
so Twitter It's help is gone away and x is taking over. Unfortunately,
what we used to have is sort of dwindling into sort of this outrage
engine where everyone should angry at each other and it's full of misinformation while he
tries other things. I brought in Linda Yakarino to be the adult in the
room. She's supposed to bring back the advertisers, but she's working with her
hands tied behind her back because Elon's still tweeting horrible things. That is just
making it very, very hard to anyone to take it seriously. And Ben
Masrick, I I gather when you were researching this book, you did not
get particular access to certain things. You had to go out there and play
investigative. I mean, I had to work around it. Elon did not
want to talk to me about this because he was doing the Walter Isaacs and
biography and totally understandable. I worked around him in his inner circle. I
had lots of intersources at Twitter, people who he was working with in the
room, face to face, the one on ones, and yeah, you
know, with the Facebook story, I didn't have access to Zuckerberg and networked
out. It's sometimes the main character is not the most credible source for a
story, and in this case it was. It was drawing it from all
the sources around. Well, a lot of times they're too close to the
product anyway. Well they have they have, they have a story to sell
you, and they're gonna make you go in that direction. And we've seen
it with you know, Michael Lewis and SBF. We see it with Walter
and Elon. If you have access to a main character at that degree,
often you fall in love with that main character because that's what they're trying to
do. So it gets tricky, you'll fall in love with breaking Twitter.
Ben Mesrick is the author New York Times best selling author of Dumb Money,
It's Alon Musk, and the most controversial corporate takeover in history. Thank you
for joining us, well, thank you for having me appreciated. Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven. And I Heeartsmedia presentation