Matt Levine Dissects Elon Musk's Controversial Tweet

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

Tracy, you know what story has made this summer really fun?

Tracy Alloway (0:21)

I do actually. It has to be Tesla, right?

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Yeah, so the last few weeks have just been this incredible saga of Tesla, starting with early August when its CEO, Elon Musk, said he was going to take the firm private at a price of $420 a share.

And then he said in the same tweet that he had funding secured. And ever since then, there's just been this mad scramble on the part of everyone to figure out what that tweet meant, whether it was legal, what the story behind it was and everything. And I just found it to be incredibly fun and amusing, the whole thing.

Tracy Alloway (1:01)

Oh yeah, I mean, we thought that people dissected Donald Trump's tweets quite a bit, but the way they've been examining Elon Musk's tweets is definitely even more intense than that.

And I gotta say, when he first tweeted it, I don't know about you, but I was really scratching my head at the 420 reference. A lot of people thought that could potentially be a joke because 420 is, well, code for marijuana, right?

Joe Weisenthal (1:29)

Yeah, I have to say, I was on vacation during the week when it happened, but of course, even when I'm on vacation, I'm still checking Twitter every 10 minutes. And as soon as I saw that tweet, I was like, there's just no way this is real. I didn't for a second actually believe this could possibly be a real thing.

And of course, Tesla hasn't gone private at $420 a share. But of course, this raises all kinds of questions about the legality of just tweeting something like that and what funding secured means and what CEOs can tweet and Elon's already unusual. And I think our guest today to help us understand this is probably the very best person to talk about it because as soon as this happened, the entire internet was like, we have to hear from this columnist his take because it's definitely gonna be the best take.

Tracy Alloway (2:20)

Yeah, I would broadly agree with that. And talking about US disclosure rules is always fun, but this particular person makes it even more so.

Joe Weisenthal (2:31)

And on that note, I would like to bring in this week's guest, Matt Levine. He's an Opinion columnist here at Bloomberg. And like I said, honestly, I think within a few minutes, everybody was like, we gotta get Matt Levine's take on this. And then over the next several weeks, all of Matt's columns on Tesla became must reads.

So here to sort of help us understand everything that happened is Matt. Thank you very much for joining us.

Matt Levine (2:56)

Hey guys, thanks for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (2:57)

Matt, where were you when you saw the tweet?

Matt Levine (3:01)

I forget where I was exactly, but I've been not writing my column regularly for the last couple of weeks and I was planning to not do it. And then Elon came along and I've been writing mostly about him for a couple of weeks.

Tracy Alloway (3:13)

So when you saw the first tweet, the infamous funding secured $420 a share tweet, what did you think about it?

Matt Levine (3:22)

I didn't think it was a joke per se, but my first reaction was kind of, he's gone a little farther than he thinks he has here. You know, I've written about a lot of people who have, launching fake takeover offers is a thing that happens. And the SEC and the regulators and prosecutors take that seriously, and people have recently gone to prison for launching fake tender offers. So I think that Elon Musk has this fondness for sort of making bold claims that he can't necessarily always back up on Twitter.

And I think he was kind of going along with that without really kind of considering that this is a bit of a more serious area.

Joe Weisenthal (4:01)

The gravity of what he had just said.

Matt Levine (4:03)

You know, if he's like, I'm gonna make a car that flies, everyone will be like, Elon, right? But if he's like, I'm gonna take the company private at 420, it's a little more serious.

Joe Weisenthal (4:10)

It just occurred to me that we should back up a second, because like I said, this sort of intersection of finance and law is kind of your specialty, which is why so many people want to get your take. You are a lawyer by training, right?