OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Elon Musk has gone from tech darling who pioneered electric cars at Tesla to corporate media’s public enemy number one In the days following his acquisition of Twitter.
Musk was the target of a New York Times hit piece on Saturday, as the Old Grey Lady ginned up anger over the billionaire tech CEO’s firing of Twitter executives “for cause” and reportedly did not intend to pay them their precious “golden parachutes.”
NYT tech editor Mike Isaac claimed that Musk was trying to stiff former Twitter execs out of severance packages.
“Mr. Musk also appears unlikely to pay the golden parachutes that the fired top executives of Twitter were set to receive. Under the merger agreement, those executives — including Parag Agrawal, the chief executive — had been set to receive compensation of $20 million to $60 million if they were fired,” the report complains. “But Mr. Musk terminated the executives ‘for cause,’ meaning he did it because he alleged he had justification, which may void that agreement, two people with knowledge of the matter said.”
Saturday Night News: Musk fired the company’s entire senior staff “for cause,” an attempt to avoid paying out tens of millions of dollars in severance packages to the former CEO, CFO, GC and head of legalhttps://t.co/vUF4PheK29 pic.twitter.com/KhhCvDOX03
— rat king (@MikeIsaac) October 30, 2022
The Grinch who stole Twitmas also was going to stomp on the latte-sipping little people, according to the Times.
“Elon Musk planned to begin laying off workers at Twitter as soon as Saturday, four people with knowledge of the matter said, with some managers being asked to draw up lists of employees to cut,” the Times reported.
“Mr. Musk, who completed a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on Thursday, has ordered the cuts across the company, with some teams to be trimmed more than others, said three of the people, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation,” the Times reported in sketchy fashion. “The scale of the layoffs could not be determined. Twitter has around 7,500 employees.”
Then came the part that caught Pro Public editor Eric Umansky’s eye.
What a guy. @elonmusk is making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation *kicks in on Tuesday.* https://t.co/sEclZozKV5 pic.twitter.com/inw3vF0kIL
— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) October 29, 2022
“The layoffs at Twitter would take place before a Nov. 1 date when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. Such grants typically represent a significant portion of employees’ pay. By laying off workers before that date, Mr. Musk may avoid paying the grants, though he is supposed to pay the employees cash in place of their stock under the terms of the merger agreement.”
Then Urmansky added: “What a guy. @elonmusk is making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation *kicks in on Tuesday.*”
But Musk put an end to all of this ‘reporting,’ obviously coming from disgruntled employees, with a simple retort:
This is false
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022
“This is false,” Musk simply responded.
But the battle over what is ‘fake news’ doesn’t end there. Musk tackled the notorious 2016 election denier Hillary Clinton who had tweeted out a fallacious report from the LA Times.
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton blamed Republicans for spreading “conspiracy theories” — apparently not referring to Trump-Russia collusion, which was quite possibly the biggest media hoax of all-time.
The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.https://t.co/MQor4NDFeE
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 29, 2022
“The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories,” Clinton wrote on Twitter. “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.”
Clinton’s tweet linked to an LA Times article with the headline: “Accused Pelosi attacker David DePape spread QAnon, other far-right, bigoted conspiracies.”
“In a personal blog that DePape maintained, posts include such topics as ‘Manipulation of History,’ ‘Holohoax’ and ‘It’s OK to be white.’ He mentioned 4chan, a favorite message board of the far right. He posted videos about conspiracies involving COVID-19 vaccines and the war in Ukraine being a ploy for Jewish people to buy land,” the article read.
Elon Musk retorted to her in a now-deleted tweet: “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.”
Musk linked his tweet to an article from the unreliable Santa Monica Observer titled: “The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning.”
However, this turns out to be a case of dueling fake news stories — Elon Musk referencing one to question a narrative and Hillary Clinton referencing one to push a false narrative.
The website purportedly belonging to DePape that the LA Times links to in its article, frenlyfrens.com, is no longer active after the Paul Pelosi attack.
The site was created on Sept. 8, 2022, according to WHOIS – a public database that provides information about domain registrations. The Wayback Machine – a digital archive of internet websites – only began archiving the site on Oct. 28, 2022. Google first indexed this site in September — extremely convenient, especially for a recent Berkeley nudist who lived in a commune with BLM and LGBTQ activists. A neighbor said DePape and his hippie brethren were like ‘birds of a feather.’
Thus, there are more than enough substantive reasons to seriously doubt the mainstream narrative that DePape was a ‘conservative,’ ‘Ultra-MAGA,’ or whatever label the Democratic Party wants to throw around in order blame 74 million Republican voters for an underwear-clad, hammer-slinging, sexual deviant battling with the 82-year-old husband of the Speaker of the House at 2:30 a.m. in San Francisco.
When the New York Times called out Musk for his transient sharing of the dubious story, he was quick with a devastating retort:
This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times! pic.twitter.com/d6V6m5ATW2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
“This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times!”
There is a new sheriff in town. And the Kings of Fake News Media do not like it one bit.
