--- title: Elon Musk Should've Been Stopped Long Ago description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/6168452/elon-musk-should-have-been-stopped-long-before-he-came-for-twitter/ author: Francine McKenna article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-04-19T22:36:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:34:40.397Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Elon Musk Should've Been Stopped Long Ago og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltad3b490bd3e10d97/69893d05fb4eaca31b897f7a/elon-musk-joe-rogan-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Elon Musk Should Have Been Stopped Long Before He Came for Twitter > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=78ffc5a6-db0e-413c-bf65-3bffe2f5caee&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME Person of the Year 2021: Elon Musk [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Person of the Year 2021: Elon Musk](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/mYXITUNy.m3u8) (12:42)  _Published 2021-12-13. Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too. In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society._ by [Francine McKenna](https://time.com/author/francine-mckenna/) ## Francine McKenna Apr 19, 2022 10:36 PM UTC Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too. In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society. by [Francine McKenna](https://time.com/author/francine-mckenna/) ## Francine McKenna Apr 19, 2022 10:36 PM UTC Is Elon Musk serious about buying Twitter? Given his track record for trolling and half-baked provocations, I doubt it. Dubious offers happen, but CEOs of public companies with multibillion-dollar market caps don’t typically propose them. Musk often uses Twitter to deflect attention from serious negative news about him and his companies and now he says he wants to own the social megaphone. I think Musk’s tender offer to buy Twitter will fall apart because everyone, including government regulators, should be on to his games. Twitter, as we know, adopted a[ poison pill](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/twitter-board-of-directors-adopt-poison-pill-defense-against-musk-takeover-bid) defense against Musk on April 15\. The move makes it nearly impossible for him to buy enough Twitter shares on his own to gain control. Musk could try to fight it in court, but “no court has overturned a poison pill in the last 30 years,” according to Columbia University law professor John C. Coffee Jr. Even so, Musk would have a much harder time making a pitch for Twitter if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had properly sidelined him the last time he attempted such antics. When[ the SEC settled with Musk in 2018](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226) for casually tweeting about taking Tesla private at $420, the commission ordered him to step down as Tesla’s chairman but allowed him to continue as CEO. Musk continued to be Tesla’s largest shareholder, with approximately 21.7% of Tesla’s outstanding shares at that time. [ Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton](https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/clayton-settlements-elon-musk-and-tesla) said Musk’s penalty “reaffirms an important principle embodied in our disclosure-based federal securities laws. Specifically, when companies and corporate insiders make statements, they must act responsibly, including endeavoring to ensure the statements are not false or misleading and do not omit information a reasonable investor would consider important in making an investment decision.” After the settlement, Musk’s ownership share grew — to 23.1% by the end of June 2021, according to Tesla’s proxy. If the SEC had barred him from the CEO job he’d perhaps own fewer Tesla shares that he could use as collateral for a Twitter takeover. Musk was able to exercise a significant portion of vested stock options in the last half of 2021 as Tesla CEO, reaping billions in profits. He later sold enough to bring his ownership percentage down to about 17% by the end of the year. When he exercises the rest of the stock options he’s been awarded since 2018, he could bring the percentage ownership [back up to nearly 24%.](https://www.barrons.com/articles/how-twitter-board-stock-ownership-compares-musk-tesla-51650304124) ## Missed opportunities The SEC should have also barred Musk from serving as an officer or director of any public company, a so-called D&O bar, back in 2018\. Since financial penalties have minimal impact on multi-billionaires, in its original complaint [the SEC originally sought a full D&O bar ](https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-219.pdf)against Musk. The agency does so in more than 70% of its cases involving individual defendants. In the end, Musk’s lawyers helped him avoid that penalty, and regulators relented, perhaps because of Musk’s unusually close association with Tesla. If regulators had taken those punitive steps, Musk’s options for acquiring another public company like Twitter would be severely limited. Afterall, waging a proxy fight–one that starts with Musk taking a board seat and then gaining control by winning friends and influencing other board members who then vote him Ruler for Life–doesn’t seem to be his style. In fact, he quickly changed his mind about taking a Twitter board seat when it was offered. When Musk settled with the SEC in August 2018 over his unserious bid to take Tesla private, more than 22 million people, including journalists and media organizations, followed him on Twitter. Since then, his cult of personality has exploded. He now has more than 82 million Twitter followers and continues to bypass traditional media channels by obsessively tweeting to defend himself or clap back at perceived enemies like the SEC, journalists, and Tesla whistleblowers. News coverage of Musk, his companies, and his crypto investments, is now primarily driven by his tweets. > [](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776) Because the SEC, and Department of Justice, didn’t stifle Musk’s shenanigans when they had the chance, he’s been free as a bird to tweet long and loud about whatever multi-billion dollar deal he’s hatching up. The lax penalties meant that he never stopped tweeting dismissively about government regulators, the settlement, and its constraints. He repeatedly risks contempt charges over his disputes with the SEC over those 2018 tweets. Musk’s lawyer even[ accused the SEC of harassing his client](https://www-wsj-com.proxyau.wrlc.org/articles/elon-musks-accusation-of-harassment-countered-by-sec-11645232813) with repeated enforcement activity since the SEC’s sanctions,[ according to this Tesla filing](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605/000095017022000796/tsla-20211231.htm). ## Causes for concern [According to the Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-probes-trading-by-elon-musk-and-brother-in-wake-of-tesla-ceos-sales-11645730528), the DOJ and SEC are now investigating stock sales by Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal, who serves on the Tesla board. The investigation was again prompted by a Musk tweet. The day before brother Elon tweeted a poll asking whether he should sell 10% of his holdings Kimbal Musk sold $108 million of his own shares. Musk also began selling shortly after the tweet. Those investigations come amid other legal problems for Musk and his companies, including a judgment of racial discrimination requiring[ Tesla to pay $15 million](https://www.npr.org/2022/04/14/1092804493/telsa-racial-discrimination-lawsuit-15-million) to a former contractor, a[ California lawsuit alleging discrimination](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-02-11/la-fi-tesla-race-discrimination-lawsuit) at a Tesla factory, and a Department of Justice investigation at[ SpaceX](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/doj-investigating-spacex-after-hiring-discrimination-complaint-.html) over alleged discriminatory hiring practices. Even some deals that Musk has fully consummated haven’t gone well. With Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of Solar City,[ analysts didn’t see a strategic or business rationale](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-buyout-of-solarcity-is-a-negative-for-the-stock-analysts-say-2016-06-22?mod=article%5Finline) at the time. Shareholders also objected to what they believed was a non-arm’s length transaction [mired in the appearance of conflicts of interest](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-musk-may-have-to-justify-solarcity-deal-in-court-2016-06-23) because the two companies were entangled at a personal and business level for Musk. Shareholders eventually sued, claiming Musk coerced the company’s board into the deal. They asked a Delaware court to order Musk to pay Tesla $13 billion in damages.[ A decision in the case is due soon](https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/delaware-chancery-court-judge-joseph-slights-iii-set-retire-2022-01-13/#:~:text=Slights%20is%20currently%20in%20charge,awaiting%20a%20post%2Dtrial%20ruling.). In his Twitter bid Musk repeats his 2018 intention “to retain as many shareholders as is allowed by the law in a private company”. How was he going to do that for Tesla? A “special purpose fund” would enable any shareholder to retain its Tesla investment. Ann Lipton, a law professor at Tulane University wrote in 2018[ that wouldn’t work](https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business%5Flaw/2018/08/a-tesla-riddle-when-is-23-x-1156-300.html) and nothing has changed since. ## Word on the street Twitter investor sentiment is on a roller coaster, up and down with each new Musk tweet or announcement in the last two weeks. Twitter’s stock jumped up over $50 with news of Musk’s initial 9.1% stake and then fell back to $45.08 on April 14, closing significantly below Musk’s offer of $54.20 a share before the extended holiday weekend. Twitter opened slightly higher at the start of this week but still nearly 15% below Musk’s bid. By midday Tuesday it was sinking again with [ongoing doubts about Musk’s funding](https://www.ft.com/content/826ae398-9945-4429-bd2f-29c5e14d6edd) and the news that several private equity firms were contemplating a stake, but [most as a “white knight” ](https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-pro-rata-4aeb1b9f-aa4b-4e96-8d7b-e6cc21e1656d.html?chunk=0&utm%5Fterm=twsocialshare#story0)to rescue Twitter from Musk. Twitter users, what Musk has referred to as a “de facto town square”, are arguably an important arbiter of the viability of the deal. Sentiment analysis using Google Trends, Brand24, and Social Search on the key dates of the Twitter acquisition campaign, shows the “de facto town square” doesn’t believe Musk either. Negative sentiment overtook positive on April 9 when Musk decided not to join the Twitter board and then spiked dramatically negative on April 14 when he admitted he was not sure he’ll “actually be able to acquire it.” Dennis Howlett, a Twitter early adopter and retired co-founder of[ Diginomica](https://diginomica.com/), is fed up. “The SEC needs to rein in this man’s child-like behavior. His actions have made Twitter toxic. No right-minded investor would try to buy it now.” As for me, I agree with historian and culture critic Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who said in a recent interview that there’s only one way to stop a personality cult that repeatedly ignores the rule of law. “[It takes prosecution and conviction](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/16/history-shows-trump-personality-cult-end-00024941) to deflate their personality cults.” ## Transcript Okay, all right, all good. So, which living person do you most admire? I admire anyone who is making a positive contribution to humanity. Whether that is an entertainment or technology or, you know, I think anyone who's sort of doing things that are really useful to the rest of humanity is, I admire them greatly. You know, it's really hard to escape Elon Musk's dominance over so many things in American life, right now. He's got this rocket company that is completely dominating the space launch business. He's got a car company that is completely dominating the electric vehicle market. He's got 65 million Twitter followers, and he likes to make weird jokes and set people off. And sometimes with a single tweet, he can control the stock market or the value of various different cryptocurrencies. So this is a man who's just sort of become ever present across a lot of different sectors. And this was really the year that he came into his own. His goal is to make humanity a multi-planet species. And in a time in which NASA has abdicated its operations to put people in low Earth orbit. And for the time being, at least, put people on the other worlds, SpaceX has stepped in like no other private company before it around the world. So Elon Musk's wealth is largely tied up in Tesla stock. He is the not only the CEO, he is its largest shareholder. And Tesla is one of the most valuable companies in the country, its market value is more than $1 trillion dollars. And his wealth is sort of tied up in that company. Tesla has dragged the legacy automators into the electric vehicle market. Yeah. Do companies like Ford, GM, Rivian, Lucid, pose a threat to Tesla's dominance? Or do you think you guys have so grasp the market at this point that you are going to own it? Well, if somebody makes better cars than we do, then, and they then sell more cars than we do, I think that's totally fine. Our intent with Tesla was always that we would serve as an example, to the car industry and that, and hope that they also make electric cars so that we can accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. I'm confident in the future in Tesla that will do well. And I hope some of these other companies do well, too. Earlier this year, this Tesla crashed into a highway divider in California killing the driver, another slammed into a parked fire truck in Utah, both had the autopilot feature on. There is a federal investigation underway into the autopilot software that Tesla has, which despite the name is not autopilot software, it does not drive the car for you. And people inside Tesla have expressed a lot of skepticism about whether the company's technology is eventually going to be able to get there. Are the cars safe? I mean, should I feel comfortable getting behind the wheel of a Tesla and saying, drive me where I need to go? Well, the statistics that I think are at this point unequivocal, that you know far more accidents off autopilot than on autopilot. So this is not to say that autopilot is perfect. Now to get to full self driving where you don't need to pay attention, we still obviously have a lot of work to do. So as we get to the point where interventions are extremely rare even in complex traffic situations, and get to the point where the probability of injury with full self driving is much lower than whether human driving. Right. Then obviously at that point, it would make sense to allow the car to drive itself and not have to pay attention. So this year, Elon Musk became the world's richest man ever. So we asked him about another pressing global problem, and that is income and wealth inequality. When it's time to pay taxes, new reporting from ProPublica says the nation's top 25 richest people pay little to nothing at all, including Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. One of the main criticisms of him is just that he's so rich, should any human being be worth $300 billion dollars? Yeah, a lot of the push for higher government involvements, and expropriation of assets by the government is really pushed by a bunch of politicians who are actually saying that resources shouldn't be in control of people—of private individuals, they should be in control of the government. They're basically saying they want control of the assets. I mean, I think in terms of things that people should perhaps get upset about is like, I think getting upset about excess consumption is a thing to get upset about. But, you know, somebody is just wasting money on personal luxuries in a crazy way. You know, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not Warren Buffett's biggest fan, frankly. But, you know, he sits there. And he reads all these annual reports, which are super boring. Does anybody want that job? I think most people do. No, I don't want that job. But like, he's not, he's not like, engaged in like, insane, conspicuous consumption. So you have say, like, okay, sure he's got a high net worth, but doesn't— he's doing a useful job for the economy, you know, and he's very skilled at it, and should probably keep doing it. Elon Musk definitely uses Twitter in a way that no other business leader does. And it's gotten him into a lot of trouble in recent years. His twitter feed is juvenile, to say the least he has insulted some important people in really immature ways. But when a person with 65 million followers and $300 billion dollars, is just having fun, that tends to create ripples in the larger pond. You are not to put too fine a point on it, the richest man in the history of the world, and arguably the most influential. And yet you tweet freely and playfully and mischievously. I guess that's—that's accurate. So are feuds with policymakers? Or poking Jeff Bezos? Is that good for the overall brand? Yeah, I don't really think about brand optimization to be frank, as lobbyists for my tweets, which are often self inflicted wounds, or humor that I find funny, but not necessarily that other many other people find funny, right? You know, when you say take the red pill, do you worry about sending none to— I say take both pills. But do you worry at all about activating motivating the, you know, political fringe? Yeah, actually, when I said take the red pill, I didn't realize that was some like, politically charged phrase— Right. I'm just referring to "The Matrix". Yeah. You know, yeah. Like, you know, make sure you accept reality for what it is right? And it turns out, it's like, also like some, like, accept right wing dogma thing, or something? I don't, I didn't realize that at the time. You do have the ability to move markets with a tweet, should any one man have that power? Well, um, you know, the markets move themselves all the time. And so, you know, especially Tesla stock has seen some very big changes in value from one day to the next based on nothing, as far as I can tell. So just statements that I make_ are they materially different from random movements of the stock that might happen anyway? I don't think so. It's not like, you know, stock drops in half or something like that, you know, Elon Musk is someone who pursues his goals relentlessly. And I think that does sometimes make him blind to the potential human toll, the potential human cost that, that can create for some of the people who gets sort of ground up in the gears of the things he's trying to do. You've made statements, downplaying COVID-19, you kept your factories open, running at the height of the pandemic. Well, actually, technically, I think there's a misunderstanding there on the on the factories front, Tell me about that. So other car factories in the United States had started—had restarted. Right. And we were blocked, only because our car factories in the Bay Area in California. So California had actually said, manufacturing can restart. And then Alameda County sided off their own accord that the Tesla could not restart. Reopening the factory in Alameda was arguably a poor management choice. I think he was aware of the risks that his employees were taking. I don't think it was necessarily a fair choice to pressure or invite or ask or instruct employees to come back to work. Are you vaccinated? If I may ask. Yeah. I'm very pro-vaccination. We've it's the science is unequivocal. I treat it to that effect. But by the same token, I am against forcing people to be vaccinated. You know, I think this is just not something we should do in America. I think we should encourage people to be vaccinated, strongly try to convince them to be vaccinated, but not force them to be vaccinated or for example, force them to get vaccinated or get fired. Elon Musk is incredibly influential in the, in the cryptocurrency world. He's constantly tweeting about his opinions about certain cryptocurrencies versus others. He is known as a big proponent of Dogecoin. And someone who has in the past taken Tesla's assets and invested those into Bitcoin and then sold that Bitcoin at a profit. Well, I mean, I could really sort of wax on about the nature of money for hours because I played a significant role in creating PayPal. And so my understanding of the money system at a fundamental level of how it actually works, the detailed mechanics of it is I think there's there very few people that understand it better than me. Bitcoin is an interesting example obviously, the prime mover on this, but the transaction volume of Bitcoin is low, and the cost per transaction is high, it is at least at its base level, suitable for maybe an exchange a store of value, but fundamentally, Bitcoin is not a good substitute for transactional currency. And even though it was created as a silly joke, Dogecoin is better suited for transactions. Why is that? The total transaction flow that you can do with Dogecoin is substantially more than, like transactions per day, is much higher than—has much higher potential than Bitcoin. It is a slightly inflationary but that inflationary number is a fixed number as opposed to a percentage. Right. So that means over time, its percentage inflation actually decreases. And that's actually good because it encourages people to spend and rather than sort of hoard it as a store of value. I'm going to switch to a personal question a little bit if you're okay with that. Yeah, sure. So what happened with Grimes and do you have a new girlfriend? Oh, man. Are you seeing someone new? I know here we are with our somewhat different approach. Grimes as I said, like 70 separated, you know, like, it's just that her work, has her just being in different places a lot versus my work. So we, you know, weren't seeing each other that much. We're still—we're still good friends. And I do not have a new girlfriend or anything. Okay, yeah. I mean, this place is basically like a technology monastery, you know. Technology monastery? Yeah. There's hardly any. I mean, there's someone here, but not many. And it's remote. Yeah. And we deal to do technology. Yes. 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