MSNBC host Joe Scarborough raged at Tesla CEO Elon Musk during a Wednesday “Morning Joe” segment for responding to a 2017 video of co-host Mika Brzezinski.
Footage of Brzezinski circulated across Twitter last week saying Musk is “trying to control how people think,” which she implied is the media’s job. Musk responded to the recirculated footage with two laughing emojis.
“The dangerous edges here are that he [Musk] is trying to undermine the media, trying to make up his own facts, and it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that is our job,” she said in 2017.
🤣🤣
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2022
Scarborough said Twitter would be a “sewage dump” if Musk buys out the social media company after offering the board $43.4 billion to take complete ownership of the platform.
“She just asked a question, which I think is a legitimate question to ask, well, ‘are there any guardrails that Twitter could put up to stop the hostile bid?’ Of course, two or three hours later there was breaking news that in fact Twitter did put up guardrails to dilute the stock,” he began. “People just freaked out and they dug up a five-year-old video…that was taken out of context five years ago even, then we find out that the Associated Press has done a fact check on it because Elon Musk joins in which tells you what a sewer Twitter would be if he ran it.”
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Jonathon Lemire said Brzezinski was talking about former President Donald Trump in the clip, not Musk. He then said disinformation can be spread and amplified easily on social media. (RELATED: Musk Has Some Fighting Words For Twitter Board Members)
“The importance of this is not that it’s about Mika, it’s about the fact that Elon Musk got involved in misinformation [by] churning up a five-year-old video on Twitter, which shows again, Mika, what a sewage dump Twitter would be if Elon Musk took it over,” Scarborough continued.
Twitter’s board member adopted the “poison pill” defense against Musk on Tuesday to potentially dilute his ownership stake in the company. The defense mechanism limits a single shareholder from purchasing too many shares, forces the company into sale and allows for shareholders to buy stock at a cheaper price.
Musk became the largest shareholder of Twitter in early April by purchasing a 9.2% stake.
The billionaire said there is a “Plan B” if the Twitter board rejects his offer, but went into no specifics.