When Elon Musk wants to make a point, it can often be blunt. On the day he took over Twitter last fall, he walked into the San Francisco company's headquarters carrying a sink. He tweeted "let that sink in." Get it? Twitter has gotten rid of most of its workforce, and has fallen behind on rent and contract obligations. Now it is auctioning off memorabilia, fancy office furniture and professional kitchen equipment from its San Francisco offices, where large spaces now sit empty and free meals are a relic of the past.
Elon Musk is defending his massive cost-cutting at Twitter as necessary for the social media platform to survive next year, in part due to debt payments tied to his $44 billion takeover of the company. Musk described Twitter as like a plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don't work. He was speaking to a late-night audience on a Twitter Spaces call Tuesday. That's after Elon Musk said earlier on Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter's CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk share a reputation as disrupters. Now, they're grappling with tribulations that may be unlike anything thrown at them before. Trump and Musk are known for their egos and have used Twitter to showcase their eccentricities. This week they face a reckoning, brought on in part by their relationship to the social media site now owned by Musk, the Tesla CEO. Trump is confronted with a congressional committee's recommendation to the Justice Department that he be criminally prosecuted for his part in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by his supporters. Musk set up a Twitter poll in which most respondents said he should step down.
By MATT O'BRIEN, KELVIN CHAN and TOM KRISHER AP Business Writers
Millions of Twitter users asked Elon Musk to step down as head of Twitter in a poll the billionaire created and promised to abide by. But Monday afternoon there was no word from Musk on whether he'll step aside or who a new leader might be. Twitter has grown more chaotic and confusing under Musk's leadership with rapidly vacillating policies that are withdrawn or altered. Many of the votes for Musk to step down likely came from Tesla investors, who have grown tired of the 24/7 Twitter chaos, which they say has distracted the eccentric CEO from the electric car company, his main source of wealth.
