Days After Elon Musk Ripped Twitter for Not Allowing Free Speech, He Becomes its Biggest Shareholder

Win McNamee. Getty Images.

Back in the 80s, there was an inexplicably famous businessman named Victor Kiam who was sort of a discount Trump. He'd go on Letterman occasionally. He ended up owning the Patriots for a while, but between being perhaps the worst owner in the history of Boston sports and his inability to avoid saying stupid shit that made the NFL look bad, he was forced out by the other owners. Anyway, his fame came from commercials he did for Remington electric razors featuring the catch phrase, "I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company!" (Which didn't do Kiam any favors when he cracked jokes about one of his players sexually harassing a female reporter, setting off a nationwide boycott of Lady Remington products.) 

I bring this up because our single most famous business mogul hates a social media platform so much, he's buying the company. This was Elon Musk last week:

And this is him today:

Source -  An SEC filing revealed on Monday that Musk — the world’s richest person with a fortune of more than $287 billion, according to Forbes — bought some 73.5 million shares of the company, which are worth an estimated $2.89 billion.

News of the acquisition — which makes Musk Twitter’s largest shareholder, ahead of Vanguard, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock — sent shares of Twitter soaring by more than 25% in early trading on Monday.

Love Musk or hate him, believe that Twitter should be wide open or support them regulating speech, you have to admire the sheer audacity of the move. Musk rolling into the shareholders' meetings with all the Big Dick Energy of owning the most shares in the room would be a sight to behold. I mean, this further proof he's the closest thing we have to a real life Tony Stark. A multibillionaire who uses his limitless wealth on his passion projects when he's not inventing new technologies to save the world. 

And as a bonus, now Musk can get away with posting anything he damned well pleases. Twitter can, and has, shut down accounts like the NY Post for reporting the Hunter Biden laptop story, The Babylon Bee for making joke headlines, and Trump himself. And if Trump had half the balls he pretends to, he would've done this a year ago. Musk actually backed up his threat. Now he gets to employ that other Golden Rule that says he who has the gold, makes the rules.

Look, I understand where people are coming from when they want social media regulated. There are so many fake accounts out there pushing false information. It's not a conspiracy theory but confirmed fact that there are bots from foreign countries who are no friends of the United States that generate divisive content across social media platforms in order to drive Americans apart. And I have no doubt our government is sponsoring the same kind of programs overseas. So it's important to know who these accounts belong to and what there agenda is before you believe anything you read. 

That said, as a general rule, I side with Musk on the free speech thing. Short of allowing direct threats or truly harmful content like advocating violence or whatever, the best way to counter speech you don't like is with speech of your own. He just happens to have a few tens of billions of dollars available to help ensure it. He's like a modern day Citizen Kane, buying the modern day equivalent of a newspaper in order to get his message across. And if he loses money in the deal, so be it. There's more where that came from:

Personally, I hope Musk keeps going until he buys the whole thing.