What's US politics got to do with Elon Musk's $44 billion Twitter offer?

Elon Musk’s audacious bid appears to threaten the stranglehold that left-liberal politicians and intelligentsia have had over both American mainstream and social media for years now. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

It was probably inevitable that Elon Musk’s $44-billion bid to buy social media platform Twitter would turn intensely political. After all, ever since the 2016 US presidential election, the right wing and conservatives have been accusing the company of a leftist/Democratic Party bias. Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, too has made it clear several times that he thinks Twitter’s censorship and intervention laws are skewed.

Events have moved fast in the month since Musk made his offer of purchase, and he has been facing attacks coming from all directions. Within days of the Twitter board accepting Musk’s offer, the Joe Biden administration announced the creation of a “Disinformation Governance Board”. To many people, this did not seem to be a coincidence. They saw it as a vehicle for overt government censorship, which the American Constitution disallows.

Media reports last week, however, suggested that the government had bowed to the backlash and was dropping the idea.

Musk’s audacious bid appears to threaten the stranglehold that left-liberal politicians and intelligentsia have had over both American mainstream and social media for years now. Musk has emphasised that he wants all voices to be heard, including those that detest him, and the liberal establishment has reacted by calling for more censorship, not less. No one knows whether Musk will fulfil his promises if he gets to buy Twitter, but his proposals—like making the platform’s code-of-conduct algorithms public—certainly indicate a more democratic and bottom-up approach. This may actually be, as Musk has been insisting, a fundamental battle over freedom of speech.

There have been accusations that Musk is now spending too much time on the Twitter deal, and neglecting his two prime businesses—Tesla and SpaceX, which launches rockets and is setting up Starlink, a constellation of communication satellites that will provide internet access across the planet.

On Friday, Musk replied that this was not true: “To be clear, I’m spending <5% (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!” Some hours later, he announced: “Super excited to be in Brazil for launch of Starlink for 19,000 unconnected schools in rural areas & environmental monitoring of Amazon!”

But by now, other fronts had opened up. The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 dropped Tesla from its Environment-Social-Governance (ESG) Index. Musk responded angrily, pointing out that while Tesla, which makes electric vehicles, was not on the index any more, fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil remained. He called ESG a “scam”, saying that the index had been “weaponised by phony social justice warriors”.

Since May 4, Tesla’s stock price has fallen more than 30 percent, from $952.82 to $663.9 when markets closed on 20 May.

Meanwhile, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing has sued Tesla over anti-Black harassment and discrimination in its Fremont car plant.

It is an all-out war now between the Biden administration and various Democratic Party state governments on the one side, and Musk on the other. Musk has tweeted that though he has in the past always voted for Democrats, he is now a Republican. “In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party,” he wrote on Thursday. “But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold…”

Hours later, a business news website carried a story that in 2016, Musk had sexually misbehaved with a SpaceX flight attendant and when she complained to the company’s human resources department, SpaceX paid her $250,000 to quit and keep quiet. Musk has denied the charge and joked that he had come up with the perfect name for the scandal: “Elongate”.

The Biden administration has never seemed to like Musk. One reason could be that Biden has been calling for higher taxes to be paid by the super-rich and Musk is the richest man in the world. Another could be that unlike almost all California billionaires, who strongly support Democrats, Musk makes donations to both Democrats and Republicans. Plus, he has also said that he will not build any more Tesla plants in California because of its tax laws and work culture, and has shifted his US manufacturing hub to Republican-ruled Texas. He has also often mocked the left-liberal and “woke” progressives who hold considerable sway currently on Washington’s policies.

In August last year, Musk was not invited by Biden to the signing ceremony for an executive order that called on automakers to sell more electric vehicles—but executives from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were. In February, the White House stated that Biden had no plans to meet Musk.

“Biden has pointedly ignored Tesla at every turn and falsely stated to the public that GM leads the electric car industry, when in fact Tesla produced over 300,000 electric vehicles last quarter and GM produced 26,” Musk said in an e-mail interview at the time. He also tweeted that the Biden administration was doing “everything it can to sideline” and ignore Tesla, despite its dominance in the electric vehicle industry.

On Friday, he said: “The attacks against me should be viewed through a political lens—this is their standard (despicable) playbook—but nothing will deter me from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech.” The US has perhaps never seen an openly declared war on this scale between a federal government and a businessman. And Musk’s uniquely brash persona makes it all the more interesting.