Welcome back to closing bell on cheddar news. Everyone
, we still have a market meltdown on our hands
. But a key story that we've been covering closely
here on closing bell is this saga surrounding Elon musk's
bid to buy twitter. Now making its way all
the way to the nation's capital. A group of
18 House Republicans calling on Twitter's board to preserve all
records related to the company's response to musk's offer.
Well, the request signaling that congress could launch an
investigation into twitter and its so called poison pill response
if the GOP wins back the majority in november's midterm
elections. So joining me now is Caleb, silver
editor in chief of investopedia Caleb. It's great to
see you. I mean this has been the story
that has kept on giving for weeks now and keeping
a lot of investors on edge. Talk to me
more about what exactly this group of house republicans are
demanding from twitter's board. Yeah, who needs billions
or succession when you have the must twitter saga playing
out. It's so entertaining. But this is a
very serious letter. This comes from the committee of
the judiciary, from led by senator Jim Jordan,
the republican out of Ohio, demanding that twitter preserve
all records related to Elon must bid for the company
. The letter is super strongly worded Christie free speech
online is under attack by big Tech. It says
in particular, twitter has increasingly engaged in heavy handed
censorship to silence prominent voices and stifle views. This
is the context of the letter you could see it
yourself online. It's a strongly worded letter and to
your point if they win back the majority of republicans
, they may start a probe on twitter and how
they consider that it prevents free speech and it does
keep prominent voices or or points of view off of
its platform. It's getting hot up in there in
twitter right now. Do you think they could be
effective Caleb? I mean of course we have to
see how this all plays out um where musk's bid
actually goes and whether or not republicans do reclaim the
house come november. But is there meat to this
case? There could very well be because well one
they have to win the House and it doesn't look
unlikely that will happen to they have to get a
probe going three and investigation charges. So all this
could play out over several years. It's not like
it's happening over the next couple of months. So
this is a long term play but it's just a
shot across the bow by congressional republicans who probably will
end up taking the house that they're going to be
tough on big tech and they're gonna use must bid
for twitter to take it private so that he can
get the platform to be open source and remove its
censorship. They're gonna use that as a case in
point to get much tougher on big technology companies,
not only twitter facebook as well. So it is
a bit interesting because I think some people would consider
Elon musk, the richest man in the world running
multiple different technology companies from Tesla SpaceX, part of
this big tech umbrella. But in this case it
sounds like lawmakers are actually using Elon musk as you're
pointing out as a vehicle almost in support of him
to go after some of these other Silicon Valley's like
a twitter, is that right? That's right.
And they're unlikely bedfellows in a situation like this.
He is a billionaire. He has complained about potential
higher taxes. We don't know if those are coming
or not. So he is a billionaire and you
find, you know, no crisis going to waste
in Washington, especially when it comes to the social
media platforms. So they're zeroing in on this as
a, as a way to say, hey,
when we get in power, we're gonna take a
completely different tone as it relates to these big technology
companies. So here's the odd factor is that there
have been some reports that Jack Dorsey of course,
one of the founders and former ceo of twitter is
actually friendly with Elon musk. Now Jack Dorsey would
be right. The institutional big tech Elon musk,
at least in this case is not. And so
any sense as to how Jack Dorsey might come down
on this and how that could influence twitter's board.
It's very interesting because, right, he is no
longer the Ceo of the company, but he does
still own a fair amount of shares. Maybe he
maybe he would like to see the type of twitter
that Elon musk has been proposing where there's an edit
button where there's no censorship where anybody can say anything
they want on the platform and and see it play
out that way. But musk has also said he
doesn't care about the economics of this deal or how
twitter is going to work. He wants to make
an open source, Jack Dorsey's, you know,
got some a fair amount of shares in twitter.
I don't know if he's really willing to give up
on its potential to make profits and grow as a
publicly traded company. So that's going to make an
interesting battle there. There's a lot of other people
who are early on in twitter's founding, who have
a lot of shares in the company. They might
not want the company to go this route either.
That's said with this new potential tender offer that musk
is throwing out of 46 a half billion. That's
starting to look pretty sweet and no matter what twitter
is in play right now, Ellen must put twitter
and play the blood is in the water. Yeah
, so it is interesting that twitter's up today of
about 3.5% approaching that takeover price just of$50 a
share Caleb of course must can move any market out
there with a simple tweet and he's doing that in
the case of twitter has been doing that. But
what about consumers? It must really does make this
open source. Do you think twitter's user base sticks
around any indication as to how that would change and
what it might mean from the bottom line. Yeah
, it's tough to say because look, it's only
about 200 million people users and they use it less
frequently than they used to, like a lot of
other social media platforms. The problem with twitter is
that hasn't been able to monetize its audience in a
way that a Snapchat has in a way that a
tiktok has or on instagram, but if it went
further in that direction and open source, that could
be a lot of clutter for users who like to
use it to find the news to communicate with people
to follow the people they enjoy following. It might
become a much messier platform and it might be one
that's also less profitable. So less interesting. The
shareholders potentially less interesting to its current user base.
What's stopping Elon musk is anything from doing this to
other technology companies out there. Like a meta for
instance, that's a huge company or even like an
alphabet. I mean twitter is smaller in scale maybe
snap would be a better example, but Elon musk
is the richest man in the world, effectively.
If he wanted to continue after twitter, potentially he
could, yeah, he absolutely could. That said
twitter is where he's got his base, he's got
82 million followers, most of them really like everything
that he says or retweet the things that he says
and he uses it as a place to promote the
stuff going on in his companies and the Kryptos he
may or not may or may not own. So
twitter is his platform, that's why he's gone after
it and he says it is the social circle law
, This is where we're gathering and exchanging ideas.
And he'd like to see that blown wide open,
irrespective of what happens to its potential to generate profits
in the long term. Alright, Caleb, silver
, editor in chief at investopedia Caleb. Thanks so
much for joining us this friday afternoon.