Twitter and Elon Musk are now officially at war

Elon Musk has attempted to terminate his $44 billion bid to take over Twitter, only to find that dropping out of the deal might not be that simple.

Last Friday, Musk – one of the world’s richest billionaires, the CEO of Tesla and the least funny man on social media – told Twitter’s board that he is pulling out of the deal, citing concerns about how many spam bots are operating on the platform.

But, according to legal experts, the loathsome meme merchant may be forced to carry out the deal after all. Twitter’s chairman, Bret Taylor, announced that the company intends to take legal action to enforce the agreement. Because Musk has already signed a contract, Twitter stands a good chance of forcing him to honour his commitment or at least demand a 1$ billion break fee. Either option would be an L for Musk, although he’s currently pretending that this was all part of some devilishly brilliant game of 4D chess – and that he’s not mad, but actually laughing!

Musk made three arguments as to why he was justified in breaking off the agreement: that Twitter had failed to provide enough information on the number of spam accounts on the platform; that it had misrepresented these figures to the US financial watchdog, and that it had breached their agreement by failing to consult him on the recent firing of a number of senior employees. However, numerous legal experts have argued that these are not going to be sufficient grounds for him to win his case.

It’s been a bad week for Musk and a good week for people who hate him. Speaking at a rally on Saturday, Donald Trump denounced him as a “bullshit artist” which, given the crossover in their fanbase, has got to hurt. While Trump vs Musk might be a bit of an Alien vs Predator situation, I know who I’m backing in this particular beef  – at least Trump, for all of his flaws, was funny on Twitter.