'Watch them sweat:' Speculation swirls as Elon Musk becomes largest Twitter shareholder
Joe Saunders, The Western Journal
The worlds of high finance and social media collided Monday with the news that South African billionaire Elon Musk has purchased a majority share in the social media giant Twitter.
With the purchase worth $2.9 billion, Musk became Twitter’s largest shareholder, according to The New York Times, and made it clear that a man who's publicly courted dissatisfaction with Twitter is putting his money where his mouth is.
The question now is where he takes it from here -- and Twitter’s liberals can’t be happy about the possibilities.
Twitter is the platform that squelched the New York Post’s groundbreaking report in 2020 about then-candidate Joe Biden’s wayward son Hunter and the laptop he left in a Delaware computer store, brimming with evidence that he’d used his father’s position and family name to grift millions in foreign countries.
It’s a platform that has routinely demonstrated blatant bias against conservatives -- and banned now-former President Donald Trump in his last days in office and announced that the ban would continue even if Trump returned to the White House.
But with Musk holding the largest block of shares in the company -- four times more stock than Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, according to the BBC -- all of that could change.
Musk is a self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist.” And recent years have proven that progressives and the Biden administration abhor nothing more than free speech.
Conservatives who have watched as social media has increasingly become the bastion for leftist ideals are applauding the news.
“Watch them sweat,” wrote Avi Yemini, Australia bureau chief for the Canadian conservative outlet Rebel News.
Others noted that Musk has made public indications that Twitter needs a change.
While the stock purchase became public on Monday, the SEC filing showed it actually occurred March 14.
Ten days later, Musk -- who hadn't publicly announced the purchase -- posted a Twitter poll asking respondents if they believed Twitter “rigorously adheres” to the principle that “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.”
“The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully,” Musk wrote.
To the surprise of literally no honest person who’s observed Twitter in operation for any length of time, the result of the poll was a resounding “no” vote from more than 70 percent. (The wonder, really, was that nearly 30 percent actually voted "yes." Maybe they didn't understand the question.)
So, a “free-speech absolutist” has become the largest shareholder in a social media platform that has become one of the world’s best-known brands for speech suppression -- one that likely gifted the world the Biden presidency thanks to its manipulation of the news prior to the 2020 election.
That should be good news for conservatives -- and even liberals who still care about freedom of speech, if there are any of them left.
Of course, what Musk might do remains a matter of speculation. The worlds of high finance and social media haven’t been favorable for conservatives lately, and nothing is ever certain about the future.
But if he maintains his position as a “free speech absolutist,” one of the most dominant social media companies in the world could get far more friendly to opponents of progressives.
And if the leftists aren’t sweating that yet, they should be.
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