Did you know? The Patriot Post is funded 100% by its readers. Help us stay front and center in the fight for Liberty and support the 2024 Year-End Campaign.

April 22, 2022

Elon Musk’s Excellent Week

The iconoclastic tech titan has made another move on Twitter — but this time, he’s serious.

As weeks go, Elon Musk had a pretty good one. And it’s not over yet. First came the news on Wednesday that his car company, Tesla, exceeded expectations for its first-quarter 2022 earnings — and not just by a little, but a lot. The company’s record-setting revenue and profits will afford him somewhere north of $15 billion in stock options.

Then there was the Russian hackers’ attempt to jam Musk’s SpaceX’s Starlink broadband internet service, which he’d deployed to Ukraine last month to combat Russia’s cyberwarfare efforts in the besieged country. The day after the hackers’ jamming efforts became public, the Starlink team slung a line of code and shut them down with a speed and nimbleness that one Department of Defense technologist called “eye-watering.”

And then came the news yesterday that free speech advocates had been hoping to hear: Elon Musk hasn’t given up on his effort to buy Twitter and thereby break up Big Tech’s near-monopoly on the information we see and hear. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

Elon Musk said he has lined up $46.5 billion to fund his bid for Twitter Inc., answering the biggest question that had loomed over his takeover offer for the social-media platform. In a regulatory filing, Mr. Musk also said he was considering taking his offer straight to Twitter shareholders, bypassing a board that appears dug in. Twitter said Thursday it was reviewing the newly detailed proposal.

Indeed, a Twitter spokesperson said, “As previously announced and communicated to Mr. Musk directly, the Board is committed to conducting a careful, comprehensive and deliberate review to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders.”

We’re not sure what to make of the board being “committed,” given that it responded to Musk’s initial $43 billion offer by enacting a limited-duration shareholder rights plan, or “poison pill” defense, which, in the event that Musk gained a stake in the company of 15% or more, would give all shareholders besides Musk the opportunity to buy additional Twitter stock at a deep discount, thereby greatly diluting the value of Musk’s stake.

No less a lefty than former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who led the company when it helped rig the 2020 election by suppressing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, said of Twitter’s board, “It’s consistently been the dysfunction of the company.” He also endorsed an old Silicon Valley adage: “Good boards don’t create good companies, but a bad board will kill a company every time.”

Speaking of bad boards, “Let’s hope Elon Musk doesn’t win his bid for Twitter,” blares the headline from the Washington Post editorial board. “Certainly, moderators sometimes make mistakes, and more transparency surrounding enforcement decisions is in order. But a broader backtracking would be an error. To protect speech at all costs and keep Twitter free of bots and spam, as Mr. Musk has said he would like to do, is almost impossible.”

“Moderators sometimes make mistakes?” Hmm … like suppressing deeply damaging news about one presidential candidate just before an election, while banning the other candidate from their platform — a sitting president — for life?

This is some weak sauce. But it’s all they’ve got. These board members from this hard-left news organization can’t come out and admit that they’re afraid of Musk’s desire to make Twitter truly free, even to those dreaded Deplorables. Beyond that, they seem perfectly happy to have been scooped up by their own tech billionaire. Why not wish the same for Twitter?

We know the answer. And we know what they’re afraid of. Musk is serious, though. And the week’s not over yet.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.