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Elon Musk Clashes With Hillary Clinton, New York Times On Twitter

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Elon Musk has been very busy following his acquisition of social media giant Twitter.

The New York Times published a hit piece over the weekend attacking Musk for firing several high-level Twitter executives “for cause” to avoid paying them “part of their year-end compensation.” NYT tech editor Mike Isaac claimed that Musk was trying to avoid paying severances to several of the senior officials he let go last week.

“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.”

“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.

Issac continued to levy accusations against Musk.

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“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. “The scale of the layoffs could not be determined. Twitter has around 7,500 employees.”

“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.”

Urmansky added a tweet: “What a guy. @elonmusk is making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation *kicks in on Tuesday.*”

“This is false,” Musk simply responded, smacking down the accusations being levied against him.

Democrats and the mainstream media also attacked Musk for getting into a spat with Hillary Clinton on Twitter after she tweeted out a report from the Los Angeles Times, which appeared to blame Republicans following the attack on Paul Pelosi last Friday.

The LA Times story that Clinton shared was headlined: “Accused Pelosi attacker David DePape spread QAnon, other far-right, bigoted conspiracies.”

Musk responded to Clinton: “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.”

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Musk has since deleted the tweet, but he also shared a link 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.”

The New York Times published another story going after Musk for sharing the dubious story — and he was quick to respond with a joke of his own:

Late last week, Musk also spoke about his plan regarding accounts that have been permanently banned on Twitter.

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“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes,” the CEO said in a tweet.

Musk said in a message to advertisers that the platform will be safe for free speech but there will still be moderation.

“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” he said.

“That said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences,” he added.

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