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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you hear

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weekday afternoons on the Drive. Ben
Mezrick is a New York Times bestselling author.

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You might remember The Accidental Billionaires,
which was adapted into the screenplay for

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the Social Network, also Bringing Down
the House. His newest creation, breaking

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Twitter, Alon Musk, and the
most controversial corporate takeover ever in history.

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I want to start Ben Mesick with
why was it the most controversial takeover?

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Well, I mean, first of
all, it's at the center of our

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global conversation. So we had a
man who had built rocket shifts and automatic

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cars come in through the front door
carrying a sink like a barbarian at the

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gate, a reluctant barbarian because he
didn't want to be there. He had

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been food and forced into it and
started trashing the place. And so because

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of what Twitter is, it's immediately
the biggest sort of loud thing in the

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corporate world, and he made a
disaster of it. He was forced into

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it. You say, was it
buyer's remorse when he started the process.

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Yeah, he came in with the
noble ideal that he was going to save

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the world from this woke mind virus. He really believed that there needed to

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be a place for freedom of speech
and that Twitter was moderating too much.

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But he made this incredibly large offer, which was forty four billion dollars fifty

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four to twenty a share, and
it was way more than the value of

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Twitter. And he got pushed back
immediately from all of the Tesla faithful because

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they realized he was going to have
to sell Tesla stock and he regretted.

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He didn't want to go through with
it, so he tried to get out,

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and he said there were too many
bots on the site, and Twitter

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sued him, so he had not
wanted to actually take it over anymore.

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He had buyer's remorse for sure,
and did Twitter wanted the money I gather

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that's why they were willing to sell. I mean, it was so much.

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It was such a huge valueuation that
they did wanted to make him.

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You know, it would have been
the board had to make him do it,

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honestly, because it would have been
against their own interests and not.

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So they forced him in. And
then he was so angry when he came

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through the doors that he reacted intensely. He started firing everybody with cause,

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trying to not pay anybody bonuses.
He wanted to restructure everything rather than just

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fixing sort of the idea that it
was being too moderated, and he makes

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mistake after a mistake that things start
to spiral out of control. But the

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bigger story to me is that Elon
didn't just break Twitter, but Twitter broke

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Elon because he starts to get an
incredible pushback from basically half the country,

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and it's the first time in his
life where he's sensing that people don't like

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him, and this hits him very
hard. Is Alon And we're talking to

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Ben Mesurick of the New York Times
bestselling Arthur His newest book is Breaking Twitter

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Elon Musk and the most controversial corporate
takeover in history. Was he like a

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child having a temper tantrum. I
mean there's some extent it's like that.

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I mean, he's a guy who
lives in memes and jokes. He's got

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a very sort of vicious sense of
humor, and he gets what he wants.

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But it's more that he sees the
entire world as a simulation that he's

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the main playing character in and all
of us are non playing characters, and

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so it's the main character in his
own video game upset that all of the

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little people are set at him.
So there is something childish about it,

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but it's really built into who he
is and how he acts. It's that

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he really thinks he's the most important
thing in the story and people should not

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be standing up to him. We're
talking to Ben Mezrich and the new book

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is breaking Twitter now. In some
ways people thought, okay, Twitter was

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getting a bit big for its bridges
and needed somebody to knock it down a

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couple notches. Yeah, I mean, it's totally fair to say that Twitter,

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first of all, was a bloated
company. It had a huge number

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of employees who didn't do anything.
There were people taking three days a week

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off. There were people who were
more upset about the smoothie bar being taken

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away at work, and they were
about anything going on Twitter, and it

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was moditoring the heck out of like
right wing conservative voices. There was no

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question that, you know, the
New York Post posting about Hunter Biden's laptop

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has suddenly you know, moderated and
suspended. The Babylon Bee was thrown out

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from making a joke that maybe was
a bad joke, but you know,

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there were things like that going on
that I think was isolating people who had

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a certain point of view. So
he came in for probably the right reasons,

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but he found very quickly that free
speech is incredibly complex and if you

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just let it go, you end
up chasing all the advertisers away because it's

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there's a lot of really, there's
a lot of teenagers. The bottom line

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is, if you dig deep into
any social media site, you're going to

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find some teenager in his basement,
and that's someone who needs to usually be

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moderated. He's confessed to having been
diagnosed with Aspergers or at least is on

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some part of that spectrum. What
do you think that had anything or what

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effect that had to do with all
of this? Yeah, I mean he

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calls himself on the spectrum. I
think that he definitely does not see social

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interaction the same way most people do. I think there's something similar with him

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in Zuckerberg in that respect, but
Elon lashes out a lot more. I

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mean, I think he's definitely one
of those people who uses humor and uses

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his charisma and his size to get
past that. He doesn't really understand how

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social interaction works, but he does. He is aware of how hyper intelligent

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he is. I mean, he's
incredibly brilliant and he knows it. And

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he also is very charismatic. I
mean, if you put him in front

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of advertisers, they love him.
But then he goes back to his room

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and at two in the morning tweets
something horrible and they realize they can't go

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anywhere near him. So he needs
to rain in the sort of toxic side.

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But he really doesn't want to,
and I don't think he has.

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He's the richest man in the world. So unfortunately Twitter is becoming like his

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yacht, his plaything that he's going
to sort of crash into the breaking Twitter.

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Ben Mezerick is with us Alon Musk
in the most controversial corporate takeover in

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history. The way you describe Alon
Musk, he sounds a lot like and

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has a lot in common with Donald
Trump. Well, it's kind of amazing

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that we're having that conversation. And
I agree that it seems like, you

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know, Elon doesn't like Donald Trump. He's someone was not going to support

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Donald Trump. But there are a
lot of similarities in terms of how he's

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running Twitter. And how he's responding
to critics and uh and it's interesting.

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It's a little scary, but I
think that Elon, you know, has

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that authoritaryan kind of mindset, especially
at his companies. So yeah, well,

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I you say it's it's it's scary, but it's scary in a dark

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comedy kind of way. Yeah.
I mean it is a comic story.

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If you read the book, Thing
Efterything happens that is just completely bizarre and

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hilarious. Uh and and you know
it's it's the oddest and most complex takeover

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you've ever seen. Smoothie bar.
Huh. I count myself lucky if we

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have a candy bowl in the middle
of the conference room floor. I know

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you got to you gotta get that
smoothie bar. I would like a smoothie

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bar. They used to have a
coffee machine, a latte machine that would

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draw pictures of Jack Dorsey, the
former CEO in the phone. That's great.

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Yeah, Ben Mesick is with us. And the name of the book

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is Breaking Twitter. Elon Musk and
the most controversial corporate takeover in history.

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What what's the future of of now
X does or or does em? Yeah,

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I mean he's turning it into this
everything app, so he's kind of

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walking away from his original view of
making it the most true place on the

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Internet in this global town hall.
It's really becoming the chat room of this

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big other thing. And he's talked
about putting dating on it. He's turked

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about turning it into a payment app. He's got Ai running around it now,

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so Twitter It's help is gone away
and x is taking over. Unfortunately,

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what we used to have is sort
of dwindling into sort of this outrage

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engine where everyone should angry at each
other and it's full of misinformation while he

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tries other things. I brought in
Linda Yakarino to be the adult in the

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room. She's supposed to bring back
the advertisers, but she's working with her

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hands tied behind her back because Elon's
still tweeting horrible things. That is just

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making it very, very hard to
anyone to take it seriously. And Ben

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Masrick, I I gather when you
were researching this book, you did not

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get particular access to certain things.
You had to go out there and play

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investigative. I mean, I had
to work around it. Elon did not

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want to talk to me about this
because he was doing the Walter Isaacs and

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biography and totally understandable. I worked
around him in his inner circle. I

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had lots of intersources at Twitter,
people who he was working with in the

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room, face to face, the
one on ones, and yeah, you

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know, with the Facebook story,
I didn't have access to Zuckerberg and networked

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out. It's sometimes the main character
is not the most credible source for a

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story, and in this case it
was. It was drawing it from all

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the sources around. Well, a
lot of times they're too close to the

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product anyway. Well they have they
have, they have a story to sell

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you, and they're gonna make you
go in that direction. And we've seen

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it with you know, Michael Lewis
and SBF. We see it with Walter

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and Elon. If you have access
to a main character at that degree,

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often you fall in love with that
main character because that's what they're trying to

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do. So it gets tricky,
you'll fall in love with breaking Twitter.

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Ben Mesrick is the author New York
Times best selling author of Dumb Money,

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It's Alon Musk, and the most
controversial corporate takeover in history. Thank you

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for joining us, well, thank
you for having me appreciated. Thanks for

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listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to

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listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
from five to seven. And I Heeartsmedia presentation