The Charlie Kirk Show - The Student Loan Crisis: Explained

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, today on Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 An insight into who Elon Musk is.

00:00:03.000 Well, we talked to David Sachs, who's a friend of Elon.

00:00:06.000 And what a great conversation this is.

00:00:08.000 You'll really enjoy it.

00:00:09.000 And oh, by the way, it's over.

00:00:11.000 Twitter is now owned by Elon Musk. 0.94

00:00:13.000 Your move, degenerate liberals.

00:00:16.000 Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com, and support the Charlie Kirk show at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:22.000 Come to our women's summit at tpusa.com/slash ywls.

00:00:26.000 The world's richest man comes to bail out freedom of speech in the West.

00:00:29.000 And I haven't been this happy since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016.

00:00:33.000 That's a little bit of an overstatement, like civilizationally happy, but it feels like the good guys finally won.

00:00:39.000 Buckle up. 0.96

00:00:40.000 Here we go.

00:00:41.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:42.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:44.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:48.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:51.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:52.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:53.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:02.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:10.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:13.000 Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.

00:01:16.000 For personalized loan services, you can count on.

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00:01:25.000 If you want the best example of the fascist left, which is the inevitable conclusion of liberalism, I'm not even going to mention the author that wrote it, right, Connor?

00:01:35.000 We don't have to give him anymore.

00:01:37.000 He wrote a good book.

00:01:38.000 It was called Liberal Fascism.

00:01:38.000 He did.

00:01:40.000 And it's true. 0.56

00:01:42.000 It's where liberalism ends up.

00:01:44.000 And it's not that the left or liberals hate rich people.

00:01:48.000 It's that they don't like rich people they don't like.

00:01:53.000 I know it sounds redundant, but they don't like rich people that don't like them and vice versa.

00:01:58.000 Meaning, there are certain rich people they're perfectly fine with.

00:02:00.000 Bezos, fine.

00:02:01.000 Gates, fine.

00:02:02.000 Musk, they now hate. 1.00

00:02:04.000 One of the reasons why they hate Musk so much is because Musk was never, he never commented on this stuff before.

00:02:11.000 He just kind of built his businesses for years quietly and kind of was friends with all people, but he always had that kind of that Iron Man Tony Stark vibe.

00:02:20.000 But the reason they really hate Musk is that they believe they're entitled to Musk's loyalty.

00:02:28.000 They believe that who is Musk to think that he could betray us?

00:02:33.000 Who is Musk to think that he could defy us?

00:02:37.000 Now, why is Musk so successful?

00:02:40.000 Why is he so rich?

00:02:42.000 Well, he's rich for a lot of different reasons.

00:02:44.000 His ingenuity, his entrepreneurship, his work ethic, his risk-taking.

00:02:51.000 But let's think for a second, what does Elon Musk actually make?

00:02:55.000 And then what does Zuckerberg make?

00:02:58.000 Now, Zuckerberg is not poor.

00:03:00.000 Obviously, he's super rich.

00:03:02.000 But Musk, for many different ways, in many different capacities, he has refused just to get rich off of software enhancements.

00:03:14.000 Musk has decided to invest in what actually does improve humanity: hardware breakthroughs.

00:03:20.000 Not just computers being able to talk to themselves quicker, but actually getting from point A to point B more efficiently.

00:03:27.000 And Musk has been able to do this in a rather admirable way.

00:03:31.000 Whether it be Musk with his driverless car technology, which is still being unveiled.

00:03:38.000 But Musk actually has cared about the physical world, not just the chatter in the stars or the chatter in the clouds.

00:03:47.000 Now, his acquisition of Twitter is his first kind of venture into that world.

00:03:52.000 And that's supposed to be an untouchable arena.

00:03:54.000 You see, Musk could do almost anything besides this.

00:03:59.000 And the media would be like, oh, it's annoying, but we'll allow it to happen.

00:04:02.000 Musk could have purchased any other company.

00:04:05.000 But the company that actually determines opinions, it's supposed to be an untouchable.

00:04:14.000 It's supposed to be behind the veil.

00:04:17.000 Cut five, Fox Business on how a board's obligation is to the shareholders, play cut five.

00:04:22.000 It's been surprising how quickly this has happened, but a board is supposed to take care of shareholders.

00:04:28.000 You see, any other way the board's going to get this stock to 5420 or the company management with the board behind it is going to get 5420 on its own?

00:04:38.000 And if not, then how can any of these other concerns that they have become secondary to maximizing value for shareholders?

00:04:46.000 And that's exactly right, because Twitter has not operated as a company for quite a while.

00:04:50.000 This has exposed Twitter for not being a regular run company.

00:04:58.000 This has exposed them.

00:05:00.000 So now the board of directors is kind of scrambling like, wait, what do we do now?

00:05:03.000 We're not making much money.

00:05:05.000 We don't want to be sued for the rest of our lives.

00:05:06.000 We'll give up.

00:05:08.000 And that's the power of Elon Musk.

00:05:13.000 And breaking in just the last couple of moments, it looks like the deal is done.

00:05:18.000 Twitter and Elon Musk reached deal on buyout to be announced shortly.

00:05:24.000 Twitter tried the poison pill.

00:05:27.000 Twitter tried everything they possibly could, and they lost.

00:05:32.000 We haven't won something in a while, have we?

00:05:35.000 I'm just saying those of us that love freedom, it seems as if at every turn we're losing, losing, losing.

00:05:40.000 But Musk didn't accept the premise.

00:05:41.000 He's a solution-oriented guy.

00:05:44.000 Musk didn't care for the complaining and all that.

00:05:46.000 He said, I'm going to just now get Twitter.

00:05:49.000 Now, look, Twitter is now an African-American-owned company, and the left is outraged. 0.99

00:05:53.000 That's right.

00:05:54.000 Elon Musk is South African.

00:05:56.000 I will go back on Twitter. 0.94

00:05:59.000 Hopefully I don't have to delete that silly tweet.

00:06:01.000 I hope it happens automatically.

00:06:03.000 But under the current ownership, I'll be happy to go back on.

00:06:10.000 Speech is what keeps us human.

00:06:13.000 You see, there's two ways to govern people.

00:06:16.000 There's only two ways to govern people.

00:06:17.000 You can govern people through force or through speech.

00:06:22.000 Force is how the left prefers to govern.

00:06:27.000 They want to try to have more power than you and then make you conform to whatever it is they might want.

00:06:33.000 This is why they like masks so much.

00:06:35.000 They don't want you to be able to speak up.

00:06:36.000 They don't want children to have a memory of freedom.

00:06:40.000 Speech requires reason.

00:06:43.000 Speech requires moderation in your thoughts.

00:06:48.000 It requires you to also be able to defend your position against what could be a better idea.

00:06:54.000 Speech makes us more human and makes us more civil.

00:07:00.000 There's this great parody tweet.

00:07:01.000 It's just phenomenal.

00:07:03.000 I can't believe this Twitter account hasn't been kicked off yet.

00:07:06.000 But it's a parody of the left.

00:07:08.000 Let me try to find it.

00:07:09.000 Andrew sent it earlier here.

00:07:11.000 And it's this woman who kind of mocks leftist takes on certain things. 0.88

00:07:16.000 It's kind of like a Babylon B sort of tweet.

00:07:20.000 And there it is.

00:07:21.000 Thank you.

00:07:22.000 And so here it is.

00:07:23.000 It's Titiana McGrath, like the funniest Twitter account ever.

00:07:26.000 Quote, if Elon Musk buys Twitter, this is a parody, by the way.

00:07:29.000 If Elon Musk buys Twitter, there's a real danger that people will start saying whatever they want, whatever they want.

00:07:34.000 That's exactly how Nazi Germany started. 0.79

00:07:38.000 That's their argument, isn't it?

00:07:41.000 The Urban League says the worst thing for civil rights would be the fact that people would actually get their civil rights back.

00:07:50.000 TheGuardian.com, Robert Reisch, says, quote, billionaires like Musk use their vast wealth to build a world unconstrained by laws, shareholders, or accountability.

00:08:00.000 Musk has now put together the $46.5 billion financing package to buy Twitter, two-thirds of it from his own assets and one-third from bank loans secured against Twitter's assets.

00:08:09.000 It's the biggest acquisition financing ever put forward for one person.

00:08:13.000 Isn't that amazing?

00:08:16.000 God bless Elon for wanting to put his own resources to try to save speech in the West.

00:08:22.000 Here's what the Twitter here. 0.80

00:08:24.000 I just can't wait to see the new headlines.

00:08:28.000 This is from Adam Coleman on Twitter.

00:08:31.000 It's hilarious.

00:08:33.000 How Twitter is rooted in white supremacy.

00:08:36.000 Next one.

00:08:37.000 Twitter, the bird app, is now the misinformation app.

00:08:41.000 Elon Musk ushers in Trumpism for the conservative base.

00:08:45.000 Or my favorite.

00:08:46.000 Why repealing Section 230 is now necessary?

00:08:51.000 Or how about Hillary Clinton? 0.94

00:08:52.000 For too long, tech platforms have amplified, this is real, amplified disinformation extremism with no accountability.

00:08:58.000 The European Union is poised to do something about it.

00:09:01.000 I now urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line and bolster global democracy before it's too late.

00:09:08.000 Watch the left all of a sudden be all on board for tech censorship now that Elon Musk owns the platform that used to be so valuable.

00:09:17.000 They are going to be marching in the streets.

00:09:18.000 Regulate, break up.

00:09:22.000 How dare the big companies be owned by rich people?

00:09:26.000 I thought they were all for that.

00:09:27.000 As long as it serves their purpose, they're for that.

00:09:33.000 Robert Reich says, quote, Twitter founders and top managers don't want Musk to take over the company.

00:09:38.000 They offered him a seat on the board, but he didn't want it because he'd have to be responsible for all the other shareholders.

00:09:43.000 They're now adopting a poison pill to stop him, but Musk's plan to buy shares directly with a tender offer that shareholders can't refuse.

00:09:49.000 After all, it's a free market, Robert Reich says sarcastically.

00:09:54.000 He says, quote, when billionaires like Musk justify their motives by using freedom, beware.

00:09:59.000 What they actually seek is freedom from accountability.

00:10:04.000 If Musk wants freedom from accountability and there will be no accountability, then the company will go bankrupt.

00:10:09.000 Something tells me, though, that in two years from now, Twitter is going to be worth twice as much.

00:10:15.000 Taking the company private, he's going to unlock the potential that Twitter has because it does have a lot of potential.

00:10:22.000 It used to be a really great platform, and now it's not.

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00:11:29.000 Now, I want to, however, just touch on a little bit of what just happened in France.

00:11:34.000 So, France had their elections on Sunday, and it was a runoff election between Emmanuel Macron and Maureen Le Pen.

00:11:41.000 Macron, of course, is the low testosterone beta male who calls himself a prime minister, who is steadily running France into the ground.

00:11:50.000 He ran as kind of a moderate business type, but he's been anything but that.

00:11:55.000 Macron is a spokesperson for the World Economic Forum.

00:11:59.000 If you want another type of president that Pete Buttigieg would ever be, unfortunately, I don't think he ever will be president, but he might be.

00:12:06.000 Who knows?

00:12:07.000 If this current Joker could be president, then anyone can be, he would be exactly like Emmanuel Macron.

00:12:14.000 France is a wonderful country.

00:12:16.000 Let me just start with this.

00:12:17.000 I love France.

00:12:18.000 I love French culture.

00:12:19.000 I love the language.

00:12:20.000 I love the people.

00:12:22.000 I do not like the recent political stances that France has taken, especially over the last couple of decades.

00:12:30.000 France has become increasingly socialistic.

00:12:34.000 It has become very much, let's say, postured to be against the working man.

00:12:43.000 And so Maureen Le Pen sought about trying to fix that. 0.73

00:12:46.000 So Marine Le Pen is being slandered by the media, being a far-right person and all this sort of stuff.

00:12:51.000 Marine Le Pen was just trying to push back against the World Economic Forum's dominance over France and French culture and the French way of life. 1.00

00:13:02.000 France has changed dramatically because of mass immigration. 0.96

00:13:06.000 The French language is largely under attack.

00:13:09.000 French history is under attack.

00:13:11.000 And these are all things that were on the ballot.

00:13:13.000 Now, Emmanuel Macron has recently kind of run to the center in anticipation that Maureen Le Pen was going to try to exploit these things.

00:13:22.000 So the election was on Sunday, and Emmanuel Macron won.

00:13:26.000 However, I got to tell you, Le Pen did a lot better than people think.

00:13:31.000 She got more than 40%, or people thought she would do.

00:13:34.000 She got more than 40% of the vote in France.

00:13:38.000 This is Maureen Le Pen's concession speech with an English translation, Play Cut 7.

00:13:43.000 The French are showing tonight a wish for a strong counterpower against that of Emmanuel Macron for an opposition that will continue to defend and protect them in the face of the degradation of their purchasing power, attacks on liberty, putting into question our public service and our social system.

00:14:01.000 Now, she did 17 points better in this run against Macron than she did previously.

00:14:07.000 We're seeing trends like this all over Europe.

00:14:09.000 And the same way that Brexit was an early indicator for a red wave that came here in America, I believe that Maureen Le Pen doing better in France than people would have thought is an early indicator as well.

00:14:23.000 Now, the French system is parliamentarian.

00:14:26.000 However, I do think they elect their prime minister through a national election.

00:14:31.000 I could be mistaken, though, because I don't know if they were voting for Le Pen or Macron or for the party.

00:14:36.000 It's certainly different than in the United Kingdom.

00:14:41.000 But there's something that's bubbling up.

00:14:43.000 Of course, Joe Biden is happy that Macron won.

00:14:45.000 Obviously, he wants an obedient, weak leader like Macron as the West falls.

00:14:51.000 Play cut 14.

00:14:53.000 We'll feel good about the French election, number one.

00:14:56.000 Number two, I tried to talk to him last night.

00:14:58.000 We've spoken to staff, but he was at the Anglo Tower having a good time.

00:15:03.000 So I'm going to be talking to him today.

00:15:05.000 There used to be a time where someone would leave a party to go take a phone call from the United States president, regardless of what they were doing.

00:15:13.000 I want you to listen to what you just heard here.

00:15:14.000 Joe Biden says, Yeah, I tried to get on touch with him.

00:15:16.000 I talked to his staff, but they said he was too busy.

00:15:19.000 So Macron just says, I'll call him later.

00:15:22.000 Our oldest ally, the French, says, I'll call him later.

00:15:25.000 What does that say about Joe Biden?

00:15:27.000 Tells you a lot and what people think of Joe Biden.

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00:16:26.000 We have David Sachs joining us momentarily, who is one of the most experienced merger and acquisition experts in the country, a phenomenal entrepreneur, investor in many internet technology firms.

00:16:40.000 He's a venture capitalist.

00:16:43.000 He's a general partner of Kraft Ventures and previously was the CEO and founding and product leader of PayPal and then the founder and CEO of Yammer, which was acquired by Microsoft.

00:16:55.000 So he knows all about kind of this merger and acquisition world.

00:16:59.000 He has also participated in early stage venture funding, angel investments, including Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, Airbnb.

00:17:11.000 Oh, is that all?

00:17:12.000 So imagine being an angel investor in Facebook, Uber, SpaceX alone.

00:17:19.000 So excited to get his commentary on things as we get this all queued up.

00:17:24.000 We have him right now.

00:17:24.000 So with us right now is David Sachs.

00:17:27.000 Great honor to have him on.

00:17:27.000 David, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:17:29.000 Thank you for joining.

00:17:30.000 I appreciate that.

00:17:32.000 So David, just tell us kind of what's your take on this Elon Musk takeover of Twitter?

00:17:38.000 You know, I'm kind of new to the entire merger and acquisition world.

00:17:43.000 Kind of give us some inside baseball.

00:17:45.000 You know, they say they've been working through the weekend here.

00:17:48.000 Take us inside of what would be happening in that room in the room right now as this deal kind of gets put together.

00:17:54.000 Yeah, I think it's really interesting, and it's a little bit surprising to me that it's actually happening.

00:18:00.000 I was skeptical that it would actually happen.

00:18:03.000 You know, when Elon first announced this deal, I mean, it was an unsolicited offer to take over the company.

00:18:10.000 The board of directors indicated that it was a hostile offer.

00:18:14.000 They were not interested in taking it.

00:18:16.000 And as a result of that, you saw a lot of pressure being put on them from various quarters.

00:18:21.000 You saw, you know, DeSantis as a shareholder through Florida Pension Funds threatened to sue the board for a breach of food street duty.

00:18:30.000 You saw House Republicans send a letter to Twitter to hold all their records, which implied that they might have hearings on it.

00:18:40.000 Elon kept ratching up the pressure by threatening to do a tender offer if they refused his bid.

00:18:47.000 So there was a lot of sort of brinksmanship over the last couple of weeks.

00:18:50.000 And it now looks based on reporting we've seen in the Wall Street Journal and other publications that they're in the final stages of a negotiation here in which Elon would be able to acquire the company and then presumably take it private.

00:19:04.000 So it looks like Elon's takeover here, which really started as an unsolicited hostile takeover, is going to succeed.

00:19:13.000 That's based on at least the public reporting of it.

00:19:15.000 Yeah, so I mean, I was skeptical and I was cynical.

00:19:19.000 I mean, I just feel most deals fall apart, you know, just kind of before they happen for a lot of different reasons.

00:19:26.000 But Elon seems to be doing this for an ideological reason, not a financial reason, which is interesting because the Twitter board seems to be primarily ideological and not financially driven.

00:19:35.000 I mean, who on earth would have to wait as long as they've had to wait?

00:19:38.000 Like, well, let me see whether or not, you know, $52 a share is a good deal or not.

00:19:43.000 So you kind of have this ideological undercurrent kind of while you have a business transaction unfolding.

00:19:50.000 Has there ever anything ever been like this before?

00:19:53.000 No, I think it's very unique.

00:19:55.000 I think you're exactly right that Elon is motivated here by the desire to restore Twitter to its status as a free speech platform.

00:20:05.000 He did polling of Twitter's users and it basically indicated that he wanted Twitter to be an open town square and that he thought the censorship had gone too far.

00:20:15.000 I think that is his main interest here.

00:20:18.000 I don't think he's doing this just to make money.

00:20:22.000 And I think by the same token, there was a lot of resistance by the Twitter board, also for ideological reasons.

00:20:28.000 You have to understand most of the people on the Twitter board don't own much, if any, of Twitter.

00:20:35.000 And he pointed this out in a number of tweets that the majority of the board members own little to no Twitter stock.

00:20:43.000 So they're on this board because it's like a sinecure.

00:20:46.000 They're on the board because it's a status badge.

00:20:49.000 They're on the board because it gives them influence and power.

00:20:52.000 It's like being in a very exclusive country club.

00:20:56.000 But everybody pointed this out.

00:20:58.000 And so because of that, I think that it helped create pressure on them.

00:21:03.000 I think at the end of the day, those board members don't want to spend the next couple of years in lawsuits defending why they turned down a bid that represented a substantial premium to the share price and why they breached their fiduciary duty because everyone understands they have these ulterior motives, but those ulterior motives are not sort of legally valid reasons to reject a superior bid.

00:21:27.000 So ultimately, it looks like based on the reports today, this board is going to cave into the pressure and do the right thing, which is to accept the premium to the share price and accept Elon's bid.

00:21:39.000 Yeah, I mean, it shouldn't, we shouldn't be in a world where you have to overthink this, but Twitter is not your typical company.

00:21:45.000 I mean, they say they're a company, but they're closer to, in my personal opinion, like a Democrat super PAC with a college board attached to it, right?

00:21:53.000 Which is, it's kind of like a bunch of people that kind of just sit on the board and they get football tickets or whatever, and they don't want to do much.

00:22:00.000 And they're really kind of been surprised by this entire thing.

00:22:03.000 But kind of walk us through kind of the technical details, though, of what's been happening the last couple of days.

00:22:06.000 They say they've been kind of in and out of meetings.

00:22:09.000 What are they still negotiating?

00:22:10.000 Are there any potential poison pills or mines that Elon might not be expecting?

00:22:15.000 Obviously, he's the best at this, but with your expertise being through these types of deals, kind of give us some insight into that.

00:22:23.000 Yeah.

00:22:24.000 So here's basically what's happened over the last two weeks.

00:22:26.000 And I think it was only 11 days ago that Elon made what was called, I think that what the M ⁇ A people called a public bear hug letter.

00:22:36.000 They have a lot of colorful language in that sort of hostile takeover world.

00:22:40.000 He basically publicly declared his desire to make an unsolicited bid for Twitter at $54.20 a share, which at the time he made the offer represented, I think, a 38% premium to the share price, but really it was a 54% share price since he started accumulating stock.

00:22:57.000 And he had acquired somewhere between 9% and 10% of the company.

00:23:01.000 So he sort of began this bear hug and started this pressure campaign on Twitter saying, look, I've made an offer here.

00:23:10.000 Your share price has languished for years.

00:23:12.000 This represents a substantial premium.

00:23:14.000 You should take it.

00:23:16.000 What happened since then is the board adopted a poison pill to basically stop him.

00:23:21.000 And what the poison pill does is it the way it works is that the one that Twitter adopted, it says if any shareholder acquires 15% or more of our stock, every other shareholder but that person basically will get additional shares in the company at a discount, at like a 50% discount.

00:23:42.000 And so what it does is it dilutes down the ownership of that 15% holder.

00:23:47.000 They can't really go to 20%. or 40% ownership or 51%, which is what they need to take over the company, because as they go up, the other shareholders get more and more shares at a discount.

00:23:58.000 So the poison pill was adopted by the board as a defense against a hostile takeover.

00:24:04.000 These things have been around for a long time.

00:24:08.000 I personally think that maybe they shouldn't be legal.

00:24:11.000 I don't personally think they're a good idea, but Delaware courts have upheld them.

00:24:16.000 And so the board adopted this poison pill.

00:24:20.000 And the idea of the poison pill was basically to thwart Elon, essentially acquiring enough stock on his own to take over the company, essentially forced Elon to negotiate with the board.

00:24:34.000 So that's basically what's been happening is he's been negotiating with the board and he's been reaching out to individual shareholders, sounds like one by one and trying to get them on his side.

00:24:43.000 The other thing Elon did, just I think it was a few days ago on Thursday, is he he released a debt commitment letter from seven major banks sort of coordinated by Morgan Stanley.

00:24:56.000 Basically, he was saying, I've got the money.

00:24:58.000 You know, you can't reject my bid by saying it's not real.

00:25:02.000 I've got the money.

00:25:03.000 First of all, he's the richest guy in the world.

00:25:05.000 He's putting up a lot of his Twitter stock as collateral.

00:25:08.000 But in addition to that, he got something like $22 billion in debt and other financing from other sort of top-tier banks.

00:25:17.000 So he basically keeps applying more and more pressure by saying, I've got the money.

00:25:22.000 And he also said, listen, if you don't take my offer, I'm going to do a tender process, which means making a offer to all the shareholders at this price, which would basically provide a way for the shareholders to indicate directly to the board they want to do the deal.

00:25:36.000 Now, the poison pill is very powerful.

00:25:39.000 It's a very effective defense and it would have thwarted the tender offer, but it would have put the board in litigation for years.

00:25:47.000 And obviously, they just don't have the stomach for that.

00:25:49.000 Yeah, so I guess that was going to be my question, which is the poison bill, the way you articulated it sounds like it could have stopped the deal.

00:25:56.000 But was it just that so many investment bankers were in their ears saying like, you don't want, you don't want to be in court.

00:26:02.000 You could tie you up forever.

00:26:03.000 Just kind of take the money and run, I suppose.

00:26:06.000 Is that probably what happened?

00:26:08.000 I think basically Elon can't defeat the poison pill directly, meaning there's no way to force the Twitter board to take the higher offer.

00:26:16.000 But if they don't take the higher offer, then, or sort of the offer that has a substantial premium, then they are liable for breach of fishery duty.

00:26:25.000 And as the pressure keeps ratcheting up and the offer becomes more real, then their liability increases.

00:26:34.000 So, you know, let's think about it.

00:26:35.000 So first, Elon makes this unsolicited offer.

00:26:38.000 Okay.

00:26:38.000 The board adopts the poison pill.

00:26:40.000 That by itself probably doesn't create a breach of fusury duty because the board can just say, listen, we don't know if Elon's offer is real.

00:26:48.000 He's mercurial.

00:26:49.000 He, you know, he says stuff like this publicly.

00:26:52.000 You know, we're going to adopt the poison pill.

00:26:54.000 We're going to force him to negotiate with us.

00:26:55.000 So that by itself probably doesn't create liability for them.

00:26:59.000 But then Elon releases his debt commitment letter.

00:27:03.000 He proves I've got the money.

00:27:04.000 My money is real.

00:27:07.000 And so then, you know, the other thing I suspect happened in the background that no one's talking about is that the Twitter board did what's called a soft market check.

00:27:18.000 Guarantee you, they went out into the market and talked to the corp dev execs at all the major tech companies.

00:27:25.000 And they asked, Are you interested in being a player here?

00:27:29.000 And, you know, and they went to the top private equity firms.

00:27:31.000 They went out.

00:27:32.000 In other words, they checked the market to see if there was another bidder.

00:27:36.000 And I suspect there was no other bidder.

00:27:38.000 So I think we can read between the lines and say that happened.

00:27:41.000 So now, you know, the bear hug is getting tighter.

00:27:43.000 Elon's got the money.

00:27:45.000 There's no other bidder.

00:27:46.000 The governor of Florida is threatening to sue them.

00:27:49.000 The Republicans on Capitol Hill are telling them to hold their records, get ready for congressional subpoenas.

00:27:56.000 And then the plaintiff's lawyers are basically, you know, getting ready to file their lawsuit.

00:28:00.000 Exactly.

00:28:01.000 They're circling.

00:28:02.000 So what the board was faced with is it was okay to put the pill in.

00:28:07.000 They're allowed to do that.

00:28:08.000 But at some point, if they don't redeem the pill and take Elon's offer, the lawsuits against them are going to get stronger and stronger.

00:28:17.000 And I suspect at the end of the day, they just don't have the stomach for two years of litigation to thwart Elon where there's no better bid on the table.

00:28:25.000 I think that makes so much sense.

00:28:27.000 It's not just kind of, it's not just like Elon saying something random.

00:28:31.000 He made it very real, very quickly.

00:28:33.000 And he obviously has the money to do it.

00:28:35.000 Tesla's stock went up 10% last week.

00:28:37.000 I mean, he's got the, he's got the, he's got the resources.

00:28:40.000 I want to ask you just about Elon the person.

00:28:41.000 I think that's something that really fascinates our audience to how much you're able to share kind of who would do something like this, right?

00:28:47.000 It's a very unusual move.

00:28:50.000 Only the world's richest man could do this.

00:28:52.000 So, David, give us a little window.

00:28:54.000 Who is Elon Musk?

00:28:55.000 I mean, kind of give us a little bit of a window into what drives this man, the eccentric person who would just spend $42 billion to save free speech.

00:29:05.000 Who is this guy?

00:29:06.000 I think, you know, Elon is what you see is what you get.

00:29:11.000 You know, that's, that's, I've known him for a long time.

00:29:13.000 And what you see really is what you get.

00:29:15.000 When he says that he's motivated here by a desire to restore free speech to Twitter and make it the open town square, I really believe that's his motive.

00:29:24.000 He's also a very effective business person.

00:29:27.000 And I think he'll also make money for the company and fix various things that are broken about it as a business.

00:29:33.000 But I think first and foremost, his motivation here really is free speech.

00:29:38.000 And, you know, what he talks about publicly is what he really thinks.

00:29:41.000 You know, he's not really holding much of anything back.

00:29:44.000 You saw him lash out the other day about Bill Gates, you know, because Bill Gates put on a half billion dollar short position on Tesla.

00:29:56.000 And then I guess Bill tried to reach out to Elon to engage him on some philanthropic cause.

00:30:01.000 And Elon asked him if he sold that short position.

00:30:04.000 And Elaine said he did.

00:30:06.000 And yeah, exactly.

00:30:07.000 And Elon said, basically, the hell with you.

00:30:10.000 I'm not going to talk to you if you're shorting my stock.

00:30:12.000 I mean, that's the kind of guy he is.

00:30:13.000 So I think he's very real.

00:30:15.000 I mean, I remember I've had conversations with him about, you know, all of a sudden he'd start talking about is the world a simulation?

00:30:21.000 You know, are we all living in a simulation?

00:30:24.000 And I remember thinking, you know, gee, it's a good thing he's not saying these things publicly because people might think he's crazy.

00:30:29.000 Well, the next week he starts talking about it publicly.

00:30:32.000 So, you know, like he's not holding anything back.

00:30:34.000 What you see is what you get.

00:30:36.000 Yeah.

00:30:36.000 And so that's really helpful.

00:30:38.000 And I just suppose, does he fear anything?

00:30:41.000 I mean, this is a very legitimate question.

00:30:43.000 Like he's purchasing the most important asset for what I believe is kind of like a global censorship regime.

00:30:52.000 Like, does he just not care?

00:30:53.000 Or is he just the type where he thinks he can overcome it or his personality is whatever.

00:30:58.000 Just like, I already have enough enemies.

00:31:00.000 Like, any insight into that?

00:31:02.000 I think he's not afraid.

00:31:03.000 He's just, he's the least like afraid person in the business world that I've ever met.

00:31:09.000 He, you know, you have to remember, go back, I think it was, was it like 2008, where he was like a week away from Tesla going bankrupt.

00:31:18.000 I remember, and actually, it was Tesla and SpaceX.

00:31:22.000 So this was right when the financial crash happened.

00:31:25.000 Tesla was one payroll cycle where like one week away from being unable to make payroll.

00:31:31.000 And then simultaneously at SpaceX, his rocket company, which I'm an investor in, full disclosure, they had had their third rocket launch and it blew up.

00:31:43.000 And he was also very close to going under.

00:31:45.000 And somehow he managed to pull it together.

00:31:47.000 And in a few weeks, he got the financing he needed to save both companies.

00:31:51.000 And then since then, the sky's the limit.

00:31:54.000 Tesla is now a trillion-dollar company.

00:31:56.000 And SpaceX is $100 billion plus.

00:31:59.000 Now, if you remember, he had put all of the money that he made from the sale of PayPal into those two companies.

00:32:06.000 And he was, he was kind of, he said jokingly, I was living on friends' couches because I wasn't even paying rent.

00:32:12.000 And that was basically true.

00:32:15.000 I mean, he used all of the hundreds of millions of dollars he made selling PayPal on these highly risky ventures.

00:32:22.000 So he is a guy who is cut from a different cloth.

00:32:26.000 He's not afraid.

00:32:27.000 He is not afraid to risk it all, to gamble at all.

00:32:30.000 I think, you know, you'd have to see him in classical terms.

00:32:36.000 You know, he's not like a military guy.

00:32:39.000 He's a business guy.

00:32:40.000 He's an innovator.

00:32:41.000 But, you know, if I were to think back to classical times, I would think somebody who's cut from the cloth, someone like Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan or, you know, Leonidas at Thermopylae, he, you know, he is that type of guy.

00:32:57.000 And yeah, I just hope it ends better for him.

00:33:00.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:02.000 We don't want it to end like the Battle of Thermopylae, that's for sure.

00:33:05.000 We're the Ides of March.

00:33:07.000 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:33:08.000 David, thank you so much.

00:33:09.000 This was amazing.

00:33:11.000 I really enjoyed it.

00:33:12.000 And you offered a very special insight window into a man that many people can't pinpoint.

00:33:17.000 But I have incredible admiration for what he's doing for our civilization, even beyond the business stuff.

00:33:23.000 And so, David, thank you so much.

00:33:25.000 Really enjoyed it.

00:33:25.000 Thank you.

00:33:26.000 Yeah, good to be with you.

00:33:27.000 Thanks.

00:33:27.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:33:28.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:33:30.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com and support the Charlie Kirk Show at CharlieKirk.com/slash support.

00:33:35.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:33:36.000 God bless.

00:33:39.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 29, 2022

The Student Loan Crisis: Explained

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