Batya Ungar-Sargon discusses partisan opinions on Musk’s role at Twitter

Author and Newsweek deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon joined Hill.TV’s “Rising” on Tuesday to discuss partisan opinions surrounding Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. 

“I definitely think that the sort of progressive hysteria and meltdown around this is sort of a huge punchline,” Ungar-Sargon said.

“Elon Musk is not quite as free speech oriented as he likes to pretend he is on Twitter,” she added. 

“He has fired people for organizing, for trying to make a union at Tesla. He has fired people for disagreeing with him. He has fired people for bringing up racist harassment,” Ungar-Sargon alleged. “He also recently built a showroom for Tesla in Shenzhen, literally in the shadow of actual concentration camps that are built to house Uyghur Muslims.”

“The problem seems to me to be that both sides are perfectly happy to cede total control to corporate overlords as long as they have their politics when, of course, the problem is that we have ceded total control to corporate overlords period,” she said. 

The Tesla CEO last week offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion. 

Musk, who was set to join Twitter’s board of directors before he reversed his decision to do so, announced earlier in the month that he owns a little more than 9 percent of the company. 

“​​I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in a letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor regarding his offer to buy the company.

Following the offer, Twitter adopted a so-called poison pill in an effort to prevent Musk from taking over the company.