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Musk Floated Using ‘World War Three’ as a Reason to Delay Twitter Deal

The $44B takeover “won’t make sense” during a historic clash of nations, Musk argued.

Elon Musk suggested delaying his buyout of Twitter because it did not make sense to buy the social media company “if we’re heading into world war three,” text messages exchanged between the Tesla boss and his bankers said. The eyebrow-raising texts were revealed by Twitter on Tuesday in a hearing at Delaware Chancery court, with the social-media giant seeking to argue that Musk’s repeated attempts to walk away from the $44 billion deal due to concerns about bots on the site were “all pretext.” In a message sent from the SpaceX tycoon to Morgan Stanley banker Michael Grimes sent on May 8—weeks after Musk agreed to buy Twitter and Putin invaded Ukraine—Musk wrote: “Let’s slow down just a few days. Putin’s speech tomorrow is extremely important. It won’t make sense to buy Twitter if we’re heading into world war three.” Twitter’s lawyers referred to the last sentence as the “money quotation.”