Elon Musk gave a rare interview to a real journalist late on Tuesday, speaking to BBC reporter James Clayton on Twitter Spaces. During the interviewClayton asked Musk if his purchase of Twitter was, ultimately, something he did of his own free will, or if it was something he did because the ongoing court case at the days when Twitter tried to force him to go all the way with the sale went wrong.
The answer (which we all suspected anyway) was that Musk actually only made the deal because he legally believed he was going to be forced into it anyway. Here is the relevant transcript of the Twitter Spaces audio:
Clayton: So you changed your mind again and decided to buy it. Did you? Did you do this?
Musk: Well, I had to.
Clayton: Right. Did you do it because you thought a court would force you to do it?
Musk: Yes.
Clayton: Right.
Musk: Yeah, that’s the reason.
Clayton: So you were always trying to get by. And then lawyers just advised you, “Listen, are you going to buy this?
Musk: Yes.
In case you don’t remember (this was September/October of last year, which is basically an eternity ago in Twitter’s current time), Twitter took Musk to court to force him to honor its signed obligation to acquire the company for the agreed price of $44 billion, or $54.20 per share. Musk argued that his obligation was void because Twitter had, he claimed, inflated its actual number of users and underestimated the number of bots on the platform.
Musk then informed the SEC that he intended to buy the company after all at the price he originally agreed with the companya most agreed-upon decision at the time was made because his legal case was weak and the lawsuit was clearly not going his way.