Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter again. Now really. Or not? Who still understands what moves Musk?

It is generally known that there is usually no level to draw on Elon Musk. Nevertheless, he managed to surprise friend and foe on Tuesday evening with the announcement that he is still prepared to take over Twitter. His legal team writes in a short statement addressed to the board of Twitter and trade watchdog SEC that the deal he initiated in April will stand.

It resembles a tumultuous and immature adolescent romance, in which the two parties alternately attract and repel each other and seem to be able to do neither with each other nor without each other. A kind of flashing light relationship with 44 billion dollars (44.5 billion euros) at stake. Because that is the amount that Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered in April to take over Twitter, an amount that is now on the table again.

Toxic

Since April, quite a bit has happened between Twitter and Musk. The Tesla CEO withdrew his offer, argued and tried to get out of it, arguing that Twitter had not been transparent about the number of spam accounts on the network. All of this eventually led to a toxic legal battle, which should end in a Delaware court later this month. The judge would then have to determine whether Musk rightly called off the takeover or not.

It remains to be seen whether that case will come to fruition. At the same time as the assurance that the takeover will continue under the old conditions as far as Musk is concerned, the lawyers also write that the lawsuit and all other affiliated legal matters must be stopped immediately. Twitter seems sensitive to the renewed advances, as the company says it intends to to seal the old deal.

Dazed

Presumably there is little else to do for Twitter. The tech company has been dazed in the ropes in recent months. Employees do not know where they stand and the image has been seriously damaged by all the allegations that Musk came up with. Recent revelations by former security chief and whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko about Twitter’s internal mess and the lack of security for its users have made things worse. The company has to move on and sees Musk, albeit reluctantly, as the only lifeline.

What moves Musk to put his old offer back on the table is a bit more difficult to interpret, to put it euphemistically. In the words of US tech journalist Casey Newton, who has been following Musk’s Twitter pranks for months, any relative consistency is ultimately an anomaly “in the multiverse of madness” of Musk’s feelings for Twitter.

Ukraine

In other words, there is no sensible word to say about what moves Musk. His recent slippages, on Twitter earlier this week, about the war in Ukraine reinforce the image of a man who likes to provoke at best, but maybe just doesn’t think very hard about what he’s putting out. Musk’s half-baked peace proposals sparked outspoken negative reactions from the Ukrainian camp, including a lack of diplomacy “Fuck off!” from the Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany.

Yet, apart from Musk’s notoriously erratic behavior, there are rational arguments for his turnaround. All this legal wrangling is damaging not only for Twitter, but also for Musk himself. The billionaire was probably not cheering when hundreds of app conversations between him and his friends and financiers were brought out in the run-up to the trial.

Diversion

Most importantly, Musk may very well have weighed his chances in the lawsuit and estimate that he’s just not doing very well. ‘He spent months figuring out escape routes,’ says an expert in The Wall Street Journal. “All escape routes are starting to close.”

Pure pragmatism, therefore, intended to do everything in its power to cancel the battle in court. The question is to what extent Musk now wants to honor his offer – with Twitter becoming part of Musk’s enigmatic ‘everything app’ X – or whether this is yet another diversion. One of the few certainties in Musk’s “multiverse of madness” is that the word “final” has no meaning there.