Elon Musk might be the richest man in the world, however apparently his takeover of X formerly Twitter, has been anything but easy for the billionaire. Ben Mezrich, author of the book "Breaking Twitter," which chronicles Musk’s bungled acquisition of the social media giant, now recounts just how touch and go it was. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
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00:00Elon Musk might be the richest man in the world. However, apparently his takeover of X, formerly
00:05Twitter, has been anything but easy for the billionaire. And now Ben Meserich, author of
00:09the book Breaking Twitter, which chronicles Musk's bungled acquisition of the social media giant,
00:14recounts just how touch and go it was. During an interview with CNBC's Squawk Box,
00:19he told interviewers, quote, he got to a point where he locked himself in his office,
00:23was so upset that the Twitter employees were considering calling a wellness check
00:27by the San Francisco police because they thought he was going to self-harm himself.
00:31He adds that this was likely because Musk's reputation was on the line with regards to
00:35the purchase of Twitter, now X. And as users fled the platform and its appraisal sank,
00:40with X now valued at half of what Musk purchased it for, that severely affected the billionaire's
00:45emotional state. But the numbers weren't the only thing that led to X staff worrying
00:49about their company's owner, with the author saying that getting booed at a Dave Chappelle
00:53show and other publicly humiliating moments contributed to the situation, with Meserich
00:58saying during the interview, the Elon before Twitter and the Elon after Twitter are two
01:02different Elons. Elon didn't just break Twitter, Twitter broke Elon Musk. It was reported earlier
01:08this year that Musk cares very much about his reputation on the platform, even firing
01:12one of the site's engineers after they suggested that his popularity was waning.