The Elon Musk show kept on the road by a hard business reality

Despite predictions of its imminent demise, Twitter is still online, the advertisers have returned. While investors in his other businesses might be horrified, they should have known what they were getting into, writes James Moore

Elon Musk gave an interview to BBC Breakfast at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco (Alamy/PA)

Broadcast media trainers used to tell people to watch Tony Blair. The former prime minister was a past master when it came to taking control of interviews and dealing with difficult questions. If he was lobbed one he didn’t like, he’d typically answer an entirely different one, of his own choosing. However, in Elon Musk, Blair now has a rival.

The Elon show landed on the BBC, with its interviewer given just a few hours’ notice for a sit-down that was screened live on Twitter as well as on the broadcaster. The full hour is on the iPlayer and it is a must-watch. Like it or not, Musk is box office.

As quixotic as ever, he was at times disarmingly honest. He confessed that he slept at the office sometimes, admitted that he only bought the thing because a court told him he had to, said he found the turmoil at the company, which has seen thousands of layoffs, “stressful”.

But when confronted with questions he didn’t want to answer, he opted for deflection, gaslighting, and turning around the interview, as if the BBC’s James Clayton was an arbiter of BBC editorial policy. Has the BBC ever published something inaccurate? How does the BBC decide what’s misinformation and what have you? These are not questions for Clayton. They are for the BBC’s director general. Perhaps Musk should interview him? It would be must-see TV.

Then there was the classic needling for “specific examples” when Clayton mentioned the unpleasantness he said he had witnessed on Twitter. This was turned into an attack on him for failing to provide one off the top of his head. A cheap tactic it may be, but it’s been proven to work. Fox News hosts regularly use it.

Musk was, however, right about one thing: reports of Twitter’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the fact that it is now running on barely a quarter of its pre-Elon staff and has lost some highly skilled software engineers, the show is still on the road. Outages? There’ve been a few of them but that’s a long way short of the meltdown that has been repeatedly predicted.

The brief kerfuffle sparked by some of the boss’s typically incendiary tweets, which resulted in the withdrawal of some advertisers, also appears to be over. They’ve been moving back. Musk claimed Twitter is close to breaking even and may soon turn cashflow positive.

But the investment in personal pride he’s made may eclipse even the staggering $44bn the mercurial businessman ultimately (over)spent on the thing. Don’t underestimate the power of Elon’s thin skin. His obvious desire to tweet #yahboosuckstoyou at his critics tells you he will do what it takes to keep the train on the tracks.

As for his other businesses? What of them? Musk claimed his dog Floki is now the CEO of Twitter, in a display of childish trolling worthy of Donald Trump. You may remember he asked Twitter whether he should stay on in a poll. Twitter said no.

The plight of investors in Tesla and SpaceX was barely touched upon during the interview, which was perhaps the biggest disappointment. Those who jumped in because of Musk must have been horrified. OK you’ve got a dog running your baby, it’s your show so have at it, but what about us?

It is hard to feel too much sympathy for them. They should have known what they were signing up for.

As for the debate about hate speech, trolling, misinformation, polarisation on Twitter? It is an important one from the perspective of society on the one hand but it’s also every so slightly irrelevant because now Musk has Twitter it’s going to be what he wants it to be and his critics can go hang.

He does what he does because he can. The restraints on him are very limited. So the Musk show goes on. It will continue so for as long as he can find customers and backers. There is no shortage of the former. That interview is one of today’s biggest talking points. I’m writing about it. So I’m as guilty as anyone else.

There is no shortage of the latter. The dollars keep flowing. There isn’t much sign of the flow being turned off. And that’s the hard business reality underneath all the sound and fury.