The Charlie Kirk Show - The Student Loan Crisis: Explained
Aired: 2022-04-29
Duration: 33:43


=== Musk's Freedom From Accountability (10:27) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody, today on Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:01]  An insight into who Elon Musk is.
[00:00:03]  Well, we talked to David Sachs, who's a friend of Elon.
[00:00:06]  And what a great conversation this is.
[00:00:08]  You'll really enjoy it.
[00:00:09]  And oh, by the way, it's over.
[00:00:11]  Twitter is now owned by Elon Musk.
[00:00:13]  Your move, degenerate liberals.
[00:00:16]  Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com, and support the Charlie Kirk show at charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:22]  Come to our women's summit at tpusa.com/slash ywls.
[00:00:26]  The world's richest man comes to bail out freedom of speech in the West.
[00:00:29]  And I haven't been this happy since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016.
[00:00:33]  That's a little bit of an overstatement, like civilizationally happy, but it feels like the good guys finally won.
[00:00:39]  Buckle up.
[00:00:40]  Here we go.
[00:00:41]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:42]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
[00:00:44]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:48]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:51]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:52]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:53]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:02]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:10]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:13]  Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
[00:01:16]  For personalized loan services, you can count on.
[00:01:18]  Go to andrewandtodd.com, the wonderfulandrewandtodd.com.
[00:01:25]  If you want the best example of the fascist left, which is the inevitable conclusion of liberalism, I'm not even going to mention the author that wrote it, right, Connor?
[00:01:35]  We don't have to give him anymore.
[00:01:37]  He wrote a good book.
[00:01:38]  He did.
[00:01:38]  It was called Liberal Fascism.
[00:01:40]  And it's true.
[00:01:42]  It's where liberalism ends up.
[00:01:44]  And it's not that the left or liberals hate rich people.
[00:01:48]  It's that they don't like rich people they don't like.
[00:01:53]  I know it sounds redundant, but they don't like rich people that don't like them and vice versa.
[00:01:58]  Meaning, there are certain rich people they're perfectly fine with.
[00:02:00]  Bezos, fine.
[00:02:01]  Gates, fine.
[00:02:02]  Musk, they now hate.
[00:02:04]  One of the reasons why they hate Musk so much is because Musk was never, he never commented on this stuff before.
[00:02:11]  He just kind of built his businesses for years quietly and kind of was friends with all people, but he always had that kind of that Iron Man Tony Stark vibe.
[00:02:20]  But the reason they really hate Musk is that they believe they're entitled to Musk's loyalty.
[00:02:28]  They believe that who is Musk to think that he could betray us?
[00:02:33]  Who is Musk to think that he could defy us?
[00:02:37]  Now, why is Musk so successful?
[00:02:40]  Why is he so rich?
[00:02:42]  Well, he's rich for a lot of different reasons.
[00:02:44]  His ingenuity, his entrepreneurship, his work ethic, his risk-taking.
[00:02:51]  But let's think for a second, what does Elon Musk actually make?
[00:02:55]  And then what does Zuckerberg make?
[00:02:58]  Now, Zuckerberg is not poor.
[00:03:00]  Obviously, he's super rich.
[00:03:02]  But Musk, for many different ways, in many different capacities, he has refused just to get rich off of software enhancements.
[00:03:14]  Musk has decided to invest in what actually does improve humanity: hardware breakthroughs.
[00:03:20]  Not just computers being able to talk to themselves quicker, but actually getting from point A to point B more efficiently.
[00:03:27]  And Musk has been able to do this in a rather admirable way.
[00:03:31]  Whether it be Musk with his driverless car technology, which is still being unveiled.
[00:03:38]  But Musk actually has cared about the physical world, not just the chatter in the stars or the chatter in the clouds.
[00:03:47]  Now, his acquisition of Twitter is his first kind of venture into that world.
[00:03:52]  And that's supposed to be an untouchable arena.
[00:03:54]  You see, Musk could do almost anything besides this.
[00:03:59]  And the media would be like, oh, it's annoying, but we'll allow it to happen.
[00:04:02]  Musk could have purchased any other company.
[00:04:05]  But the company that actually determines opinions, it's supposed to be an untouchable.
[00:04:14]  It's supposed to be behind the veil.
[00:04:17]  Cut five, Fox Business on how a board's obligation is to the shareholders, play cut five.
[00:04:22]  It's been surprising how quickly this has happened, but a board is supposed to take care of shareholders.
[00:04:28]  You see, any other way the board's going to get this stock to 5420 or the company management with the board behind it is going to get 5420 on its own?
[00:04:38]  And if not, then how can any of these other concerns that they have become secondary to maximizing value for shareholders?
[00:04:46]  And that's exactly right, because Twitter has not operated as a company for quite a while.
[00:04:50]  This has exposed Twitter for not being a regular run company.
[00:04:58]  This has exposed them.
[00:05:00]  So now the board of directors is kind of scrambling like, wait, what do we do now?
[00:05:03]  We're not making much money.
[00:05:05]  We don't want to be sued for the rest of our lives.
[00:05:06]  We'll give up.
[00:05:08]  And that's the power of Elon Musk.
[00:05:13]  And breaking in just the last couple of moments, it looks like the deal is done.
[00:05:18]  Twitter and Elon Musk reached deal on buyout to be announced shortly.
[00:05:24]  Twitter tried the poison pill.
[00:05:27]  Twitter tried everything they possibly could, and they lost.
[00:05:32]  We haven't won something in a while, have we?
[00:05:35]  I'm just saying those of us that love freedom, it seems as if at every turn we're losing, losing, losing.
[00:05:40]  But Musk didn't accept the premise.
[00:05:41]  He's a solution-oriented guy.
[00:05:44]  Musk didn't care for the complaining and all that.
[00:05:46]  He said, I'm going to just now get Twitter.
[00:05:49]  Now, look, Twitter is now an African-American-owned company, and the left is outraged.
[00:05:53]  That's right.
[00:05:54]  Elon Musk is South African.
[00:05:56]  I will go back on Twitter.
[00:05:59]  Hopefully I don't have to delete that silly tweet.
[00:06:01]  I hope it happens automatically.
[00:06:03]  But under the current ownership, I'll be happy to go back on.
[00:06:10]  Speech is what keeps us human.
[00:06:13]  You see, there's two ways to govern people.
[00:06:16]  There's only two ways to govern people.
[00:06:17]  You can govern people through force or through speech.
[00:06:22]  Force is how the left prefers to govern.
[00:06:27]  They want to try to have more power than you and then make you conform to whatever it is they might want.
[00:06:33]  This is why they like masks so much.
[00:06:35]  They don't want you to be able to speak up.
[00:06:36]  They don't want children to have a memory of freedom.
[00:06:40]  Speech requires reason.
[00:06:43]  Speech requires moderation in your thoughts.
[00:06:48]  It requires you to also be able to defend your position against what could be a better idea.
[00:06:54]  Speech makes us more human and makes us more civil.
[00:07:00]  There's this great parody tweet.
[00:07:01]  It's just phenomenal.
[00:07:03]  I can't believe this Twitter account hasn't been kicked off yet.
[00:07:06]  But it's a parody of the left.
[00:07:08]  Let me try to find it.
[00:07:09]  Andrew sent it earlier here.
[00:07:11]  And it's this woman who kind of mocks leftist takes on certain things.
[00:07:16]  It's kind of like a Babylon B sort of tweet.
[00:07:20]  And there it is.
[00:07:21]  Thank you.
[00:07:22]  And so here it is.
[00:07:23]  It's Titiana McGrath, like the funniest Twitter account ever.
[00:07:26]  Quote, if Elon Musk buys Twitter, this is a parody, by the way.
[00:07:29]  If Elon Musk buys Twitter, there's a real danger that people will start saying whatever they want, whatever they want.
[00:07:34]  That's exactly how Nazi Germany started.
[00:07:38]  That's their argument, isn't it?
[00:07:41]  The Urban League says the worst thing for civil rights would be the fact that people would actually get their civil rights back.
[00:07:50]  TheGuardian.com, Robert Reisch, says, quote, billionaires like Musk use their vast wealth to build a world unconstrained by laws, shareholders, or accountability.
[00:08:00]  Musk has now put together the $46.5 billion financing package to buy Twitter, two-thirds of it from his own assets and one-third from bank loans secured against Twitter's assets.
[00:08:09]  It's the biggest acquisition financing ever put forward for one person.
[00:08:13]  Isn't that amazing?
[00:08:16]  God bless Elon for wanting to put his own resources to try to save speech in the West.
[00:08:22]  Here's what the Twitter here.
[00:08:24]  I just can't wait to see the new headlines.
[00:08:28]  This is from Adam Coleman on Twitter.
[00:08:31]  It's hilarious.
[00:08:33]  How Twitter is rooted in white supremacy.
[00:08:36]  Next one.
[00:08:37]  Twitter, the bird app, is now the misinformation app.
[00:08:41]  Elon Musk ushers in Trumpism for the conservative base.
[00:08:45]  Or my favorite.
[00:08:46]  Why repealing Section 230 is now necessary?
[00:08:51]  Or how about Hillary Clinton?
[00:08:52]  For too long, tech platforms have amplified, this is real, amplified disinformation extremism with no accountability.
[00:08:58]  The European Union is poised to do something about it.
[00:09:01]  I now urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line and bolster global democracy before it's too late.
[00:09:08]  Watch the left all of a sudden be all on board for tech censorship now that Elon Musk owns the platform that used to be so valuable.
[00:09:17]  They are going to be marching in the streets.
[00:09:18]  Regulate, break up.
[00:09:22]  How dare the big companies be owned by rich people?
[00:09:26]  I thought they were all for that.
[00:09:27]  As long as it serves their purpose, they're for that.
[00:09:33]  Robert Reich says, quote, Twitter founders and top managers don't want Musk to take over the company.
[00:09:38]  They offered him a seat on the board, but he didn't want it because he'd have to be responsible for all the other shareholders.
[00:09:43]  They're now adopting a poison pill to stop him, but Musk's plan to buy shares directly with a tender offer that shareholders can't refuse.
[00:09:49]  After all, it's a free market, Robert Reich says sarcastically.
[00:09:54]  He says, quote, when billionaires like Musk justify their motives by using freedom, beware.
[00:09:59]  What they actually seek is freedom from accountability.
[00:10:04]  If Musk wants freedom from accountability and there will be no accountability, then the company will go bankrupt.
[00:10:09]  Something tells me, though, that in two years from now, Twitter is going to be worth twice as much.
[00:10:15]  Taking the company private, he's going to unlock the potential that Twitter has because it does have a lot of potential.
[00:10:22]  It used to be a really great platform, and now it's not.

=== France Turns Socialistic Under Macron (05:03) ===

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[00:11:29]  Now, I want to, however, just touch on a little bit of what just happened in France.
[00:11:34]  So, France had their elections on Sunday, and it was a runoff election between Emmanuel Macron and Maureen Le Pen.
[00:11:41]  Macron, of course, is the low testosterone beta male who calls himself a prime minister, who is steadily running France into the ground.
[00:11:50]  He ran as kind of a moderate business type, but he's been anything but that.
[00:11:55]  Macron is a spokesperson for the World Economic Forum.
[00:11:59]  If you want another type of president that Pete Buttigieg would ever be, unfortunately, I don't think he ever will be president, but he might be.
[00:12:06]  Who knows?
[00:12:07]  If this current Joker could be president, then anyone can be, he would be exactly like Emmanuel Macron.
[00:12:14]  France is a wonderful country.
[00:12:16]  Let me just start with this.
[00:12:17]  I love France.
[00:12:18]  I love French culture.
[00:12:19]  I love the language.
[00:12:20]  I love the people.
[00:12:22]  I do not like the recent political stances that France has taken, especially over the last couple of decades.
[00:12:30]  France has become increasingly socialistic.
[00:12:34]  It has become very much, let's say, postured to be against the working man.
[00:12:43]  And so Maureen Le Pen sought about trying to fix that.
[00:12:46]  So Marine Le Pen is being slandered by the media, being a far-right person and all this sort of stuff.
[00:12:51]  Marine Le Pen was just trying to push back against the World Economic Forum's dominance over France and French culture and the French way of life.
[00:13:02]  France has changed dramatically because of mass immigration.
[00:13:06]  The French language is largely under attack.
[00:13:09]  French history is under attack.
[00:13:11]  And these are all things that were on the ballot.
[00:13:13]  Now, Emmanuel Macron has recently kind of run to the center in anticipation that Maureen Le Pen was going to try to exploit these things.
[00:13:22]  So the election was on Sunday, and Emmanuel Macron won.
[00:13:26]  However, I got to tell you, Le Pen did a lot better than people think.
[00:13:31]  She got more than 40%, or people thought she would do.
[00:13:34]  She got more than 40% of the vote in France.
[00:13:38]  This is Maureen Le Pen's concession speech with an English translation, Play Cut 7.
[00:13:43]  The French are showing tonight a wish for a strong counterpower against that of Emmanuel Macron for an opposition that will continue to defend and protect them in the face of the degradation of their purchasing power, attacks on liberty, putting into question our public service and our social system.
[00:14:01]  Now, she did 17 points better in this run against Macron than she did previously.
[00:14:07]  We're seeing trends like this all over Europe.
[00:14:09]  And the same way that Brexit was an early indicator for a red wave that came here in America, I believe that Maureen Le Pen doing better in France than people would have thought is an early indicator as well.
[00:14:23]  Now, the French system is parliamentarian.
[00:14:26]  However, I do think they elect their prime minister through a national election.
[00:14:31]  I could be mistaken, though, because I don't know if they were voting for Le Pen or Macron or for the party.
[00:14:36]  It's certainly different than in the United Kingdom.
[00:14:41]  But there's something that's bubbling up.
[00:14:43]  Of course, Joe Biden is happy that Macron won.
[00:14:45]  Obviously, he wants an obedient, weak leader like Macron as the West falls.
[00:14:51]  Play cut 14.
[00:14:53]  We'll feel good about the French election, number one.
[00:14:56]  Number two, I tried to talk to him last night.
[00:14:58]  We've spoken to staff, but he was at the Anglo Tower having a good time.
[00:15:03]  So I'm going to be talking to him today.
[00:15:05]  There used to be a time where someone would leave a party to go take a phone call from the United States president, regardless of what they were doing.
[00:15:13]  I want you to listen to what you just heard here.
[00:15:14]  Joe Biden says, Yeah, I tried to get on touch with him.
[00:15:16]  I talked to his staff, but they said he was too busy.
[00:15:19]  So Macron just says, I'll call him later.
[00:15:22]  Our oldest ally, the French, says, I'll call him later.
[00:15:25]  What does that say about Joe Biden?
[00:15:27]  Tells you a lot and what people think of Joe Biden.

=== Pressure Builds on Twitter Board (14:38) ===

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[00:16:26]  We have David Sachs joining us momentarily, who is one of the most experienced merger and acquisition experts in the country, a phenomenal entrepreneur, investor in many internet technology firms.
[00:16:40]  He's a venture capitalist.
[00:16:43]  He's a general partner of Kraft Ventures and previously was the CEO and founding and product leader of PayPal and then the founder and CEO of Yammer, which was acquired by Microsoft.
[00:16:55]  So he knows all about kind of this merger and acquisition world.
[00:16:59]  He has also participated in early stage venture funding, angel investments, including Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, Airbnb.
[00:17:11]  Oh, is that all?
[00:17:12]  So imagine being an angel investor in Facebook, Uber, SpaceX alone.
[00:17:19]  So excited to get his commentary on things as we get this all queued up.
[00:17:24]  We have him right now.
[00:17:24]  So with us right now is David Sachs.
[00:17:27]  Great honor to have him on.
[00:17:27]  David, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:17:29]  Thank you for joining.
[00:17:30]  I appreciate that.
[00:17:32]  So David, just tell us kind of what's your take on this Elon Musk takeover of Twitter?
[00:17:38]  You know, I'm kind of new to the entire merger and acquisition world.
[00:17:43]  Kind of give us some inside baseball.
[00:17:45]  You know, they say they've been working through the weekend here.
[00:17:48]  Take us inside of what would be happening in that room in the room right now as this deal kind of gets put together.
[00:17:54]  Yeah, I think it's really interesting, and it's a little bit surprising to me that it's actually happening.
[00:18:00]  I was skeptical that it would actually happen.
[00:18:03]  You know, when Elon first announced this deal, I mean, it was an unsolicited offer to take over the company.
[00:18:10]  The board of directors indicated that it was a hostile offer.
[00:18:14]  They were not interested in taking it.
[00:18:16]  And as a result of that, you saw a lot of pressure being put on them from various quarters.
[00:18:21]  You saw, you know, DeSantis as a shareholder through Florida Pension Funds threatened to sue the board for a breach of food street duty.
[00:18:30]  You saw House Republicans send a letter to Twitter to hold all their records, which implied that they might have hearings on it.
[00:18:40]  Elon kept ratching up the pressure by threatening to do a tender offer if they refused his bid.
[00:18:47]  So there was a lot of sort of brinksmanship over the last couple of weeks.
[00:18:50]  And it now looks based on reporting we've seen in the Wall Street Journal and other publications that they're in the final stages of a negotiation here in which Elon would be able to acquire the company and then presumably take it private.
[00:19:04]  So it looks like Elon's takeover here, which really started as an unsolicited hostile takeover, is going to succeed.
[00:19:13]  That's based on at least the public reporting of it.
[00:19:15]  Yeah, so I mean, I was skeptical and I was cynical.
[00:19:19]  I mean, I just feel most deals fall apart, you know, just kind of before they happen for a lot of different reasons.
[00:19:26]  But Elon seems to be doing this for an ideological reason, not a financial reason, which is interesting because the Twitter board seems to be primarily ideological and not financially driven.
[00:19:35]  I mean, who on earth would have to wait as long as they've had to wait?
[00:19:38]  Like, well, let me see whether or not, you know, $52 a share is a good deal or not.
[00:19:43]  So you kind of have this ideological undercurrent kind of while you have a business transaction unfolding.
[00:19:50]  Has there ever anything ever been like this before?
[00:19:53]  No, I think it's very unique.
[00:19:55]  I think you're exactly right that Elon is motivated here by the desire to restore Twitter to its status as a free speech platform.
[00:20:05]  He did polling of Twitter's users and it basically indicated that he wanted Twitter to be an open town square and that he thought the censorship had gone too far.
[00:20:15]  I think that is his main interest here.
[00:20:18]  I don't think he's doing this just to make money.
[00:20:22]  And I think by the same token, there was a lot of resistance by the Twitter board, also for ideological reasons.
[00:20:28]  You have to understand most of the people on the Twitter board don't own much, if any, of Twitter.
[00:20:35]  And he pointed this out in a number of tweets that the majority of the board members own little to no Twitter stock.
[00:20:43]  So they're on this board because it's like a sinecure.
[00:20:46]  They're on the board because it's a status badge.
[00:20:49]  They're on the board because it gives them influence and power.
[00:20:52]  It's like being in a very exclusive country club.
[00:20:56]  But everybody pointed this out.
[00:20:58]  And so because of that, I think that it helped create pressure on them.
[00:21:03]  I think at the end of the day, those board members don't want to spend the next couple of years in lawsuits defending why they turned down a bid that represented a substantial premium to the share price and why they breached their fiduciary duty because everyone understands they have these ulterior motives, but those ulterior motives are not sort of legally valid reasons to reject a superior bid.
[00:21:27]  So ultimately, it looks like based on the reports today, this board is going to cave into the pressure and do the right thing, which is to accept the premium to the share price and accept Elon's bid.
[00:21:39]  Yeah, I mean, it shouldn't, we shouldn't be in a world where you have to overthink this, but Twitter is not your typical company.
[00:21:45]  I mean, they say they're a company, but they're closer to, in my personal opinion, like a Democrat super PAC with a college board attached to it, right?
[00:21:53]  Which is, it's kind of like a bunch of people that kind of just sit on the board and they get football tickets or whatever, and they don't want to do much.
[00:22:00]  And they're really kind of been surprised by this entire thing.
[00:22:03]  But kind of walk us through kind of the technical details, though, of what's been happening the last couple of days.
[00:22:06]  They say they've been kind of in and out of meetings.
[00:22:09]  What are they still negotiating?
[00:22:10]  Are there any potential poison pills or mines that Elon might not be expecting?
[00:22:15]  Obviously, he's the best at this, but with your expertise being through these types of deals, kind of give us some insight into that.
[00:22:23]  Yeah.
[00:22:24]  So here's basically what's happened over the last two weeks.
[00:22:26]  And I think it was only 11 days ago that Elon made what was called, I think that what the M ⁇ A people called a public bear hug letter.
[00:22:36]  They have a lot of colorful language in that sort of hostile takeover world.
[00:22:40]  He basically publicly declared his desire to make an unsolicited bid for Twitter at $54.20 a share, which at the time he made the offer represented, I think, a 38% premium to the share price, but really it was a 54% share price since he started accumulating stock.
[00:22:57]  And he had acquired somewhere between 9% and 10% of the company.
[00:23:01]  So he sort of began this bear hug and started this pressure campaign on Twitter saying, look, I've made an offer here.
[00:23:10]  Your share price has languished for years.
[00:23:12]  This represents a substantial premium.
[00:23:14]  You should take it.
[00:23:16]  What happened since then is the board adopted a poison pill to basically stop him.
[00:23:21]  And what the poison pill does is it the way it works is that the one that Twitter adopted, it says if any shareholder acquires 15% or more of our stock, every other shareholder but that person basically will get additional shares in the company at a discount, at like a 50% discount.
[00:23:42]  And so what it does is it dilutes down the ownership of that 15% holder.
[00:23:47]  They can't really go to 20%. or 40% ownership or 51%, which is what they need to take over the company, because as they go up, the other shareholders get more and more shares at a discount.
[00:23:58]  So the poison pill was adopted by the board as a defense against a hostile takeover.
[00:24:04]  These things have been around for a long time.
[00:24:08]  I personally think that maybe they shouldn't be legal.
[00:24:11]  I don't personally think they're a good idea, but Delaware courts have upheld them.
[00:24:16]  And so the board adopted this poison pill.
[00:24:20]  And the idea of the poison pill was basically to thwart Elon, essentially acquiring enough stock on his own to take over the company, essentially forced Elon to negotiate with the board.
[00:24:34]  So that's basically what's been happening is he's been negotiating with the board and he's been reaching out to individual shareholders, sounds like one by one and trying to get them on his side.
[00:24:43]  The other thing Elon did, just I think it was a few days ago on Thursday, is he he released a debt commitment letter from seven major banks sort of coordinated by Morgan Stanley.
[00:24:56]  Basically, he was saying, I've got the money.
[00:24:58]  You know, you can't reject my bid by saying it's not real.
[00:25:02]  I've got the money.
[00:25:03]  First of all, he's the richest guy in the world.
[00:25:05]  He's putting up a lot of his Twitter stock as collateral.
[00:25:08]  But in addition to that, he got something like $22 billion in debt and other financing from other sort of top-tier banks.
[00:25:17]  So he basically keeps applying more and more pressure by saying, I've got the money.
[00:25:22]  And he also said, listen, if you don't take my offer, I'm going to do a tender process, which means making a offer to all the shareholders at this price, which would basically provide a way for the shareholders to indicate directly to the board they want to do the deal.
[00:25:36]  Now, the poison pill is very powerful.
[00:25:39]  It's a very effective defense and it would have thwarted the tender offer, but it would have put the board in litigation for years.
[00:25:47]  And obviously, they just don't have the stomach for that.
[00:25:49]  Yeah, so I guess that was going to be my question, which is the poison bill, the way you articulated it sounds like it could have stopped the deal.
[00:25:56]  But was it just that so many investment bankers were in their ears saying like, you don't want, you don't want to be in court.
[00:26:02]  You could tie you up forever.
[00:26:03]  Just kind of take the money and run, I suppose.
[00:26:06]  Is that probably what happened?
[00:26:08]  I think basically Elon can't defeat the poison pill directly, meaning there's no way to force the Twitter board to take the higher offer.
[00:26:16]  But if they don't take the higher offer, then, or sort of the offer that has a substantial premium, then they are liable for breach of fishery duty.
[00:26:25]  And as the pressure keeps ratcheting up and the offer becomes more real, then their liability increases.
[00:26:34]  So, you know, let's think about it.
[00:26:35]  So first, Elon makes this unsolicited offer.
[00:26:38]  Okay.
[00:26:38]  The board adopts the poison pill.
[00:26:40]  That by itself probably doesn't create a breach of fusury duty because the board can just say, listen, we don't know if Elon's offer is real.
[00:26:48]  He's mercurial.
[00:26:49]  He, you know, he says stuff like this publicly.
[00:26:52]  You know, we're going to adopt the poison pill.
[00:26:54]  We're going to force him to negotiate with us.
[00:26:55]  So that by itself probably doesn't create liability for them.
[00:26:59]  But then Elon releases his debt commitment letter.
[00:27:03]  He proves I've got the money.
[00:27:04]  My money is real.
[00:27:07]  And so then, you know, the other thing I suspect happened in the background that no one's talking about is that the Twitter board did what's called a soft market check.
[00:27:18]  Guarantee you, they went out into the market and talked to the corp dev execs at all the major tech companies.
[00:27:25]  And they asked, Are you interested in being a player here?
[00:27:29]  And, you know, and they went to the top private equity firms.
[00:27:31]  They went out.
[00:27:32]  In other words, they checked the market to see if there was another bidder.
[00:27:36]  And I suspect there was no other bidder.
[00:27:38]  So I think we can read between the lines and say that happened.
[00:27:41]  So now, you know, the bear hug is getting tighter.
[00:27:43]  Elon's got the money.
[00:27:45]  There's no other bidder.
[00:27:46]  The governor of Florida is threatening to sue them.
[00:27:49]  The Republicans on Capitol Hill are telling them to hold their records, get ready for congressional subpoenas.
[00:27:56]  And then the plaintiff's lawyers are basically, you know, getting ready to file their lawsuit.
[00:28:00]  Exactly.
[00:28:01]  They're circling.
[00:28:02]  So what the board was faced with is it was okay to put the pill in.
[00:28:07]  They're allowed to do that.
[00:28:08]  But at some point, if they don't redeem the pill and take Elon's offer, the lawsuits against them are going to get stronger and stronger.
[00:28:17]  And I suspect at the end of the day, they just don't have the stomach for two years of litigation to thwart Elon where there's no better bid on the table.
[00:28:25]  I think that makes so much sense.
[00:28:27]  It's not just kind of, it's not just like Elon saying something random.
[00:28:31]  He made it very real, very quickly.
[00:28:33]  And he obviously has the money to do it.
[00:28:35]  Tesla's stock went up 10% last week.
[00:28:37]  I mean, he's got the, he's got the, he's got the resources.
[00:28:40]  I want to ask you just about Elon the person.
[00:28:41]  I think that's something that really fascinates our audience to how much you're able to share kind of who would do something like this, right?
[00:28:47]  It's a very unusual move.
[00:28:50]  Only the world's richest man could do this.
[00:28:52]  So, David, give us a little window.
[00:28:54]  Who is Elon Musk?
[00:28:55]  I mean, kind of give us a little bit of a window into what drives this man, the eccentric person who would just spend $42 billion to save free speech.
[00:29:05]  Who is this guy?
[00:29:06]  I think, you know, Elon is what you see is what you get.
[00:29:11]  You know, that's, that's, I've known him for a long time.
[00:29:13]  And what you see really is what you get.
[00:29:15]  When he says that he's motivated here by a desire to restore free speech to Twitter and make it the open town square, I really believe that's his motive.
[00:29:24]  He's also a very effective business person.
[00:29:27]  And I think he'll also make money for the company and fix various things that are broken about it as a business.
[00:29:33]  But I think first and foremost, his motivation here really is free speech.
[00:29:38]  And, you know, what he talks about publicly is what he really thinks.
[00:29:41]  You know, he's not really holding much of anything back.
[00:29:44]  You saw him lash out the other day about Bill Gates, you know, because Bill Gates put on a half billion dollar short position on Tesla.
[00:29:56]  And then I guess Bill tried to reach out to Elon to engage him on some philanthropic cause.
[00:30:01]  And Elon asked him if he sold that short position.
[00:30:04]  And Elaine said he did.
[00:30:06]  And yeah, exactly.
[00:30:07]  And Elon said, basically, the hell with you.

=== Elon Pulls Together Against Censorship (03:33) ===

[00:30:10]  I'm not going to talk to you if you're shorting my stock.
[00:30:12]  I mean, that's the kind of guy he is.
[00:30:13]  So I think he's very real.
[00:30:15]  I mean, I remember I've had conversations with him about, you know, all of a sudden he'd start talking about is the world a simulation?
[00:30:21]  You know, are we all living in a simulation?
[00:30:24]  And I remember thinking, you know, gee, it's a good thing he's not saying these things publicly because people might think he's crazy.
[00:30:29]  Well, the next week he starts talking about it publicly.
[00:30:32]  So, you know, like he's not holding anything back.
[00:30:34]  What you see is what you get.
[00:30:36]  Yeah.
[00:30:36]  And so that's really helpful.
[00:30:38]  And I just suppose, does he fear anything?
[00:30:41]  I mean, this is a very legitimate question.
[00:30:43]  Like he's purchasing the most important asset for what I believe is kind of like a global censorship regime.
[00:30:52]  Like, does he just not care?
[00:30:53]  Or is he just the type where he thinks he can overcome it or his personality is whatever.
[00:30:58]  Just like, I already have enough enemies.
[00:31:00]  Like, any insight into that?
[00:31:02]  I think he's not afraid.
[00:31:03]  He's just, he's the least like afraid person in the business world that I've ever met.
[00:31:09]  He, you know, you have to remember, go back, I think it was, was it like 2008, where he was like a week away from Tesla going bankrupt.
[00:31:18]  I remember, and actually, it was Tesla and SpaceX.
[00:31:22]  So this was right when the financial crash happened.
[00:31:25]  Tesla was one payroll cycle where like one week away from being unable to make payroll.
[00:31:31]  And then simultaneously at SpaceX, his rocket company, which I'm an investor in, full disclosure, they had had their third rocket launch and it blew up.
[00:31:43]  And he was also very close to going under.
[00:31:45]  And somehow he managed to pull it together.
[00:31:47]  And in a few weeks, he got the financing he needed to save both companies.
[00:31:51]  And then since then, the sky's the limit.
[00:31:54]  Tesla is now a trillion-dollar company.
[00:31:56]  And SpaceX is $100 billion plus.
[00:31:59]  Now, if you remember, he had put all of the money that he made from the sale of PayPal into those two companies.
[00:32:06]  And he was, he was kind of, he said jokingly, I was living on friends' couches because I wasn't even paying rent.
[00:32:12]  And that was basically true.
[00:32:15]  I mean, he used all of the hundreds of millions of dollars he made selling PayPal on these highly risky ventures.
[00:32:22]  So he is a guy who is cut from a different cloth.
[00:32:26]  He's not afraid.
[00:32:27]  He is not afraid to risk it all, to gamble at all.
[00:32:30]  I think, you know, you'd have to see him in classical terms.
[00:32:36]  You know, he's not like a military guy.
[00:32:39]  He's a business guy.
[00:32:40]  He's an innovator.
[00:32:41]  But, you know, if I were to think back to classical times, I would think somebody who's cut from the cloth, someone like Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan or, you know, Leonidas at Thermopylae, he, you know, he is that type of guy.
[00:32:57]  And yeah, I just hope it ends better for him.
[00:33:00]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:02]  We don't want it to end like the Battle of Thermopylae, that's for sure.
[00:33:05]  We're the Ides of March.
[00:33:07]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:33:08]  David, thank you so much.
[00:33:09]  This was amazing.
[00:33:11]  I really enjoyed it.
[00:33:12]  And you offered a very special insight window into a man that many people can't pinpoint.
[00:33:17]  But I have incredible admiration for what he's doing for our civilization, even beyond the business stuff.
[00:33:23]  And so, David, thank you so much.
[00:33:25]  Really enjoyed it.
[00:33:25]  Thank you.
[00:33:26]  Yeah, good to be with you.
[00:33:27]  Thanks.
[00:33:27]  Thanks, Charlie.
[00:33:28]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:33:30]  Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com and support the Charlie Kirk Show at CharlieKirk.com/slash support.
[00:33:35]  Thank you so much for listening.
[00:33:36]  God bless.
[00:33:39]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.