How Elon Musk Is Described By Ex Twitter Employees, Partners

Twitter, going on two months into the New Elon Era, continues to operate entirely at his whim.

In the early afternoon, a team from Horizon Media Inc. stopped by. Horizon is one of the largest ad agencies in the world, chaperone to brands such as Capital One and Burger King. Also in attendance were two ad execs from Twitter, as well as two major fans of Musk's: investor and podcaster Jason Calacanis and, inexplicably, his mother, Maye Musk. Horizon Chief Executive Officer Bill Koenigsberg sat at the head of the table with a colleague. "Some of my clients knew that I was going to meet you," Koenigsberg said, "and they all asked, 'Is he going to get Donald Trump back on the platform?'"

Musk had already proclaimed publicly that he didn't believe in permanent Twitter bans. So here was a moment for a careful response-perhaps an explanation of how the company planned to guard against the former president's predilection for misinformation and incitements of violence upon his return. Instead, Musk replied that it was the question he was getting from everyone, too, and, sitting there, composed a tweet on his iPhone: "If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money!" He paused, surveyed the room and asked everyone whether he should post it. One of the Twitter ad execs strenuously objected. Musk laughed and posted the tweet anyway-and fired the dissenter later that week.

Twitter, going on two months into the New Elon Era, continues to operate entirely at his whim. His antics extend the chaos-in the courts, in the media and on Twitter itself-of the seven-month legal battle that resulted in his purchasing the platform for $44 billion, much more than it was reasonably worth. He capstoned the deal on the day it officially closed by ousting almost all of its top executives and limiting the enforcement of its content moderation policies. That was Day 1, back when we were all young and our foreheads less furrowed from squinting in disbelief.

Since then, Musk has sacked more than half of Twitter's workforce; floated, rescinded and refloated an idea to verify user accounts for $8 a pop; publicly linked to a bogus news story about the violent attack on the husband of the speaker of the US House of Representatives; alienated more than half of Twitter's advertisers, forcing them to pause spending; and promised to reinstate not only the former president but a rogue's gallery of right-wing troublemakers who were previously banned for spreading misinformation and fomenting violence. And he's wrapped it all in overheated indignation about free expression-even leaking internal documents through a pair of friendly journalists, in a release he dubbed "the Twitter Files" and hyped to his 120 million followers with a popcorn emoji. "This is a battle for the future of civilization," Musk tweeted. "If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead."