When he was questioned about his use of Twitter in a 60 Minutes interview this weekend, Tesla founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk said: “I use my tweets to express myself. Some people use their hair. I use Twitter… Twitter’s a war zone. If somebody’s gonna jump in the war zone, it’s, like, ‘OK, you’re in the arena. Let’s go!’”
So, they can’t say they weren’t warned.
Musk lived up to his word Tuesday morning, when he used Twitter to criticize the show, after CBS edited a clip from its interview with him to make it appear he had stated he didn’t want to be the car maker’s chairman again.
Teasing its interview with the Tesla founder, 60 Minutes tweeted that Musk had replied “No” when asked if he wanted to return to the role.
Musk called the tweet misleading because it didn’t include his full response to the question.
His full reply was: “No. I actually just prefer to have no titles at all,” according to footage of the interview available on CBS’s website.
The interview showed him apparently close to tears as he discussed his “violent” childhood in which he was almost “beaten to death.” Musk said the show had tried to shape his story to fit their preconceptions. “This was accurate as viewed from an Upper East Side Manhattan dinner party,” he retorted.
Musk stood down from the post of Tesla chairman as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission after he tweeted in August that he had funding secured to take Tesla private at $420 per share.
Musk and Tesla were each fined $20m for the ‘$420’ tweet.
However he has remained closely allied with the company in his role as chief executive, and said in the interview that he personally oversaw a boost in the summer that saw Tesla build a temporary production line in a tent in its parking lot, and was “living in the factory” at that time.
Bloomberg News reports Tesla is shortly set to offer $837 million of bonds, backed by auto leases.