The billionaire ceo announcing just hours ago that the $44 billion Twitter private is now on hold and then tweeting hours later that he's not ready to walk away just yet.

Twitter shareholders reacting negatively to the news shares initially fell more than 20%.

They have since bounced back a bit there currently down about 13%.

So of course, many questions as this story develops, including what is Musk's endgame here and is he angling for a better price during this volatile time for tech?

I want to bring in Rahel Solomon, she is going to talk more about this for us.

Great to see you rahul.

So you know, we know that Elon musk has been negotiating this twitter deal on twitter since the beginning, but it really makes you wonder if the sec should be stepping in at this point because it's really investors being tossed about here.

So many questions.

Allison good to be with you Yes, in the words of one analyst, this is a circus show that is turning into a friday.

The 13th horror show, let's start with six a.m. This morning.

This is when the story sort of all began.

That's when Elon musk tweeted as you pointed out that yes, the twitter deal was temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users Will that tweet sent pre market shares of twitter plunging short time later at about eight a.m. Just before eight, he tweeted perhaps a clarification that he was still committed to the acquisition.

Look, we do know that Elon musk has said from the beginning when he announced his interest in twitter that he wanted to fix twitter and also rid the company of spam bots.

So if you are to believe musk at his word, perhaps the news that Reuters article suggesting that it's not as big of an issue as he initially expected.

When I asked dan Ives, an analyst who covers twitter very closely about that, he said, that's like saying the dog ate your homework.

He wasn't buying it.

But look in any event, Investors and the markets now trying to game out and figure out was this a ploy to perhaps renegotiate at a lower price?

We know his offer was 5420 or is this really an excuse for him to walk away?

So many questions?

Yes.

So he tweeted, he's committed to this deal, but investors at least a bunch of investors are still committed to selling this stock.

I mean, investors really getting hit with this, not just uh, with twitter, but we are seeing actually shares of Tesla in the green move on this.

Exactly.

So, yes.

So as you pointed out, shares of twitter plunged on this news, they then bounced back a little bit after we got that clarification or the second tweet?

Look, when he announced his interest to buy twitter, I want to show you a year to date chart of twitter and you can sort of see the price action, but when Elon musk announced his bid to buy twitter, you saw shares pop, that was in april there and then when Twitter's board accepted the offer, it popped 2 51 70 and as you can see as of yesterday was closing at 45 09 so nowhere near the 54 20 which was his offer and he did say in his sec filing that he knew he was buying it at a premium but to your point tech has been getting quite a beating as of late and twitter shares are now closer to $45.

So does 54 20 still seemed like a great deal, a great price evaluation for Elon musk unclear what we can see however, is that Tesla Tesla owners.

Tesla shareholders seem to like this news.

Those shares are up about 7% premarket and from the beginning Allison, as you know, Tesla investors were never really thrilled about this deal to begin with for one reason because Elon musk would likely have to leverage some of his shares in order to pull off this deal, but also because did running twitter would running twitter distract Elon musk from running Tesla of course he is the visionary founder of the company And so Tesla owners were never really crazy about this deal to begin with and so perhaps twitter's loss is Tesla shareholders gain something tells me we'll all be watching twitter at least Elon musk's account today, rahul Solomon thanks so much.

Let's begin.

Chief media correspondent Brian Stelter to kind of dissect this tweet Brian, you know what's your take on this calculation in the first tweet?

You know him saying that fake accounts and bots make up less than 5% of users.

Yeah, first of all bots and spam fake accounts Are a plague on Twitter.

They have been four years and to suggest that there's just a small portion of the total user base.

Give me a break.

Elon musk must know better than that.

He's on the site, he sees the problem, he sees the pollution when he uses the site.

So this has all the trappings of, of, of, of negotiations of musk trying to get a lower price, trying to re price this deal and he very well may be able to do that.

But whether the banks are on board, his finances are on board is an open question.

And then I think the other, the other question is um, how much does he really want this?

I think he is determined to uh, to lead twitter to have his vision for twitter be the future of twitter but it's more fun for him to have this deal being the works and to spout off on twitter and Get everyone's attention.

It's almost like it's more fun to be doing the deal than it is actually on Twitter, you know what I mean?

So I think we have to look to that breakup fee, a $1 billion $1 billion $1 billion?

Let the stock decline and come back around with a new a new bid for twitter brian.

What do you think are the political ramifications here if musk walks away particularly for republicans, you know who wanted to reinstate Donald trump's account.

Well that's the thing right it's more fun for him to talk a big game on twitter and say I'm gonna bring Donald trump back and I think he's not the best candidate but he shouldn't have been banned.

It's like almost more fun from us to pretend to be ceo than it is to actually own it and then I have to actually own the decisions you make and own the responsibility and the consequences.

But what does it mean for republican politicians?

There has been a surge of follower growth of new accounts coming into twitter among conservatives in the US because they believe muscle is gonna take over twitter.

So already there's been a change in the twitter user base with conservatives more interested in the platform.

Donald trump of course has not come back, he is still banned for now whether he comes back and in what way it would be a question I think down down the line in the months to come but this would have consequences politically because we've already seen twitter become more popular among conservatives, maybe a little less so among democrats or liberals in the US and of course this spans the entire world where where the policies must would put in place much more permissive content moderation that would affect many different political environments around the world.

So now I guess we just look at his twitter account and see, I'd love to know what regulators of the sec think about all this though, they must feel so un un un uh equipped to deal with the likes of musk right now.

Yeah, I I really think regulators really need to step in and they have to be a lot faster about it.

Right?