Tech Journo Kara Swisher Tells CNN’s Chris Wallace Twitter ‘Absolutely’ Could Collapse, Rips Elon Musk Over Pelosi Attack

Tech journalist Kara Swisher told CNN anchor Chris Wallace that Twitter “absolutely” could collapse under Elon Musk’s leadership, and ripped Musk over the “ridiculous” misinformation he spread about the Paul Pelosi attack.

The latest interviews from Wallace’s series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace on HBO Max feature Swisher, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, and entertainer Billy Porter.

In his interview with Swisher, Wallace asked about the “big story” in tech — Elon Musk’s stormy tenure at Twitter thus far, and how much longer it (Twitter) will last:

Chris Wallace: The big story of course, right now, when you mentioned a little bit earlier is Elon Musk, and Twitter and last year, you interviewed Elon before he took over the company about his affection for Tweeting.

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Chris Wallace: After some of his early moves since he took over Twitter, you tweeted this or you posted this. “I’ve been more than fair and even indulgent over the years, especially to Elon, this behavior is heedless and needless and more than a little cruel, he’s blowing it.”

Kara Swisher: Yes he is. I know him very well. I’ve done — I did a podcast this week about our long relationship. We’ve done a lot of interviews. I think a lot of him as a visionary. I think the cars and rockets are so impressive and such achievements. But right now the way he’s behaving around Twitter, I’m not sure what’s going on. It feels careless in a way that I don’t think he’s been like.

But he’s, he’s always been, tried to do his best I think in many ways, although there has been some issues around COVID and the factories, which we’ve argued about and a bunch of different things. In this case, his id has completely taken over. And it’s it’s out of control and nobody’s controlling it.

And so I had to say I was particularly upset by his tweet about — one of the first things he did as a CEO was misinformation about Paul Pelosi attack and he attached it to a news source that had a ridiculous anti — there’s no other way to say it — an anti gay trope from the 1970s almost. It was crazy. And he did it in a way that was so careless and never apologized. He took it down. But that that kind of thing sort of was a warning signal. What the heck is happening here to this guy.

Chris Wallace: So how does this story of Musk and Twitter how does this end?

Kara Swisher: Well, he’s got a lot of debt. That’s, that’s the issue, even though he’s the world’s richest man for now. Because Tesla’s stock where he gets most of his wealth is down rather considerably. He’s, he’s gonna have to build a business and that’s – I’m sort of curious why he’s spending all this time tweeting ridiculous stuff or attacking people. I mean, the tweets have been so juvenile and not inexplicable because he does it. But I’d like him to get back to tweeting, you know, memes kind of cat memes or whatever he wants to do. These are very pointed and angry and so, and they’re not funny. Like, sometimes he’s funny, but this is not funny. I’d like him to build a business. He’s sort of insulting advertisers doesn’t seem to be — wouldn’t be what I would do. Given 96% of their business is advertising but he attacked them as woke which was ridiculous. I know. I think I tweeted something like, If Satan had a business that could make them money, advertisers would advertise on it. And so I just don’t I don’t understand what he’s doing. He’s alienating his advertisers. He’s alienating his big users like myself and active users. We had some amazing stuff going on with Twitter spaces. And every advertiser left us because they didn’t want to be part of this. They didn’t feel safe on the platform. It was a great deal we were working on with Twitter.

Chris Wallace: Is it conceivable it could just collapse?

Kara Swisher: Yes, of course. Yeah. They got it. They owe, he is going to owe debt in April. And he has to have cashflow. He’s got to have money. Now he’s made a lot of cuts that could help. Again heedlessly, and not very nice to the people. You can, you can make layoffs everybody has to at this point in the economy, but the way he’s doing it is obnoxious. I don’t know how else to put it. I, yes, absolutely. You need revenues and he’s gonna have to pay something or else he’s gonna have to dip into his pocket and pay more and he’s taking money from a lot of his rich friends like Larry Ellison. I don’t think they expect the money back necessarily. And maybe the banks will just give him a break because he’s so rich. You know, you’ve seen it over and over again, wealthy and powerful people get a break more than others.

Chris Wallace: Right, too big to fail.

Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace drops three full episodes each Friday morning, and CNN airs a version recapping highlights of the episodes every Sunday at 7 p.m.

Watch the full exchange above via HBO Max and CNN.

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