Elon Musk hints at ‘tender’ offer to buy Twitter through cryptic tweet

Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley discusses Tesla CEO Elon Musk's latest tweet on his bid to buy Twitter.

Video Transcript

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RACHELLE AKUFFO: Welcome back, everyone. As you know, Elon Musk loves a good cryptic tweet, and he wrote, "blank is the Night" in a post, making readers think that tender was the missing word, as in a tender offer to buy Twitter. Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley has more on this. Dan, help us break this down.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, obviously, this is part of Elon's ongoing issues with Twitter and how he wants to acquire the company. This is part of the hostile takeover. Obviously tender is the night is the "blank is the Night." And then we also had what was it, love me tender? He's basically just going all-out with Twitter here and he's been using this platform for some time as his almost de facto mouthpiece. It's his best way to get in touch with people, and clearly, he has a lot of supporters on there as evidenced by the fact that if you say anything negative about him, you will be swarmed by people who vehemently disagree with anything against him.

It'll be interesting to see if he can manage to pull this together though, because obviously, Twitter's board, they want to go forward with the poison pill if Elon Musk does try to take it over. And also what kind of changes he'll actually make. During a Ted Talk last week, he had kind of discussed some of what he wants to do with Twitter, adding an Edit button. How exactly he would do that, didn't really seem like he thought that through or how he wants to make any other substantive changes. It just seems like to me in my estimation, he's upset that he can't say whatever he wants on the platform, so he's just going to buy it and see what happens.

DAVE BRIGGS: He is, Dan, the Donald Trump of Twitter today. Let's just be frank, Trump is gone and Elon now everything he tweets makes news. And now he's also going after Netflix, kicking them when they're down. He says they have "woke mind virus," which Dan, that's interesting because he's all over the Netflix app.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah.

DAVE BRIGGS: He has content on there.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, it's really strange that he put this out there, especially because, that's not Netflix. Netflix had some weird stuff on there. There was the show, the French show about kids, I forget what it was, that really blew up into a firestorm a while back. There was obviously, Dave Chappelle's special, which blew up into a firestorm, they wouldn't back down from.

DAVE BRIGGS: Which they stood by.

DAN HOWLEY: Yes, exactly.

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah.

DAN HOWLEY: So it's not as though there's some kind of woke mind virus, whatever that would entail I don't really understand.

DAVE BRIGGS: I don't know.

DAN HOWLEY: What that means but I guess, Elon Musk is upset with something on Netflix or not on Netflix. I'm not sure. But really, I think when it comes to if there's something about shows being taken off or something along those lines, usually, the show's creators or the company behind the shows are what have them taken down, it's not something like a Netflix or a Hulu that would do that. So I don't know what he's really talking about here, what's not woke or is woke on the platform.

DAVE BRIGGS: First we've heard of it really, of I mean, I don't know if you've heard it, Brad, but he calls them unwatchable. I haven't heard Netflix associated with the woke movement today until now.

BRAD SMITH: Well, the interesting thing about this too is how much Elon Musk is continuing to be vocal not just about Twitter but about other companies as well, his or not his.

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah.

BRAD SMITH: Does that also make the case easier for Twitter management to say, hey, we don't need to sell to this person, even though you do have people like Ron DeSantis trying to offer that, and the idea that we've heard many times, that it would go against the actual shareholders if the Twitter board was to deny this actual sale to Elon Musk.

DAN HOWLEY: I mean, it's interesting, right, because people that I've spoken to who you know, study social networks say that look if Elon Musk had his way and he opened it up for broader speech, meaning all speech, that there was no kind of content moderation, that it would just be a hellhole. You wouldn't want to be on Twitter. I mean, as it is now, I don't want to be on Twitter because it's just negativity left and right. So if you end up with like you know, neo-Nazis on there, I'm pretty sure-- and there are. But if you ended up with more of them, pretty sure companies like Kellogg's don't want to have their cereals right next to them, so.

DAVE BRIGGS: And that's the point, the advertisers don't want to be in that space.

DAN HOWLEY: I think they'll ditch it, so.

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah. [INAUDIBLE].

BRAD SMITH: Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley. Yeah.