June 6, 2023 • 56 mins
Robert is joined by Katy and Cody to discuss the wild lawsuit against Elon Musk.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's fleet would my Max? I'm Robert Evans and this
is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we talk about
the album Rumors, which was written by a bunch of
people who when they were making it, we're all bastards
to one another. Uh oh yeah. With me with me
today to talk about Rumors is a Cody Johnston and
(00:22):
Katie Stole. How are we doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Everybody so good, so thrilled to be here to talk
about Rumors with you.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
You know what I always think about.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I always think about how hard it must have been
to be Christy McVie. Yeah, oh god, yeah, you got
Stevie Nicks there.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
She was wonderful. R I p uh huh, absolutely wonderful.
You got a little out shown shined.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, yeah, outshun. It's hard. It's hard to it's hard
to be up against that, you know. I'm sure she
was aware of it, and I think that I think
that that bleeds through. That's part of the part of
the feel that uh you know that that that the
album has. But who's favorite song on Rumors? Favorite song?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
What?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
What? What do we got? Is everyone just going to
say the chain I.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Was gonna say I was going to say.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
It's too hard to not.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Great about.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
I was talking about this over the weekend, just like
Flo Back in general, they're an amazing band because like
you'll hear a song and you'll know that it's necessarily
Fleetwood Mac because they've got such a wide range sound
and vocalists.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
But yeah, I was gonna say the Chain.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, it's hard, but there's a lot. Yes, it's the Chain.
Are you talking? I also like throw your own way?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, jam a woman old A side and B side?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Are we talking old dust woman? Like there's A and
B Why would why would you split them up? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Dreams, I'm sorry, there's so many.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Dreams, Silver Sobers. Yeah, Secondhand News I think would be
mine after after the Chain. That's just such a fucking banger.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
You're right, there's Second News.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh my god, what a great album, What an incredible album.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Should we start playing it now?
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Just listen to to rumors and think about how all
of the lives lost in the cocaine industry were worth it?
Thank god, thank god. No, we should probably get on.
This is uh, you know, a podcast, you know what,
you know what the business is, right, We've been doing
this for five years. You guys have been on dozens
of times. Probably Now we're doing a little bit of
(02:42):
a different thing this year. We have another court case
to go over. The last time I had y'all both on,
we talked about the big lawsuit against Fox News, and
we went through the legal filing that Dominion's lawyers had
against that after all the discovery. Today we are reading
through a legal complaint from Wolf from Arnold, Eric Frozy,
Tracy Hawkins, Joseph Killian, Laura, Shan Pitite, Lars and Andrew
(03:07):
schlakesher Man. Why did all of you have complicated names
to say? Unbelievable? So these guys are all honestly yeah, yeah,
I'm I'm against them already. Oh wait, no, they're suing
Elon Musk, so I'm back on their side. So each
of these people are former longtime employees of Twitter, and
I'm very frustrated by this legal document from the start,
(03:30):
because the first sentence of the introduction reads, plaintiffs are
each longtime former employees of Twitter, and then in parentheses
colloquially and hereafter referred to as tweeps. Wait, the tweets,
they're the tweets.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
T sweeps.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh, tweets, but they're choosing to be referred to as tweeps.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
That is too tweet. That's too tweet.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah, waity, what is.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Going on with you? Is it that like they legitimately
had so much pride in old Twitter that they had
to do this because it's a bad decision, like legally legal.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Did did the tweets decide to call themselves the tweets?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I can't imagine their lawyer insisted on it, right, It depends.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
That was a big part of the culture, right there
was it was that was used to talk about them,
and it was on all their little merchant stuff. Yeah,
but we're talking in the law.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Maybe you don't need to do that.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, maybe you could.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Yeah the alleys you want to be taken seriously, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
They could have.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I mean, twits is right there, but I guess right
there on connotation the twarps.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah. So you know, uh, these these people who the
the lawsuit and forms has have more than sixty years
of collective experience working for the company, were all either
fired or constructively discharged by Twitter right after Musk took over.
Some of these guys were pretty senior. There's a vice
president in there, there's a global lead in there when
(04:58):
they they got ship quote, and due to that seniority,
some of them were in the room where it happened.
After Musk's takeover of Twitter, privy to and participants in
high level discussions and deliberations among Twitter's new leadership. After
the merger led by Musk and the cadres of sycophants
who were internally referred to as the Transition Team, Twitter's
new leadership deliberately, specifically and repeatedly announced their intentions to
(05:21):
breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations.
And they put those words into action. Plaintiff Killium was
forced to resign from Twitter after being repeatedly and specifically
directed to violate California's building codes in ways that potentially
put tweep lives at risk. See, if you say it
like that, you're making a very serious allegation. And I
(05:44):
can't take it seriously when people's lives, yeah, lives.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Because I was immediate like tweep yeah. No.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Also, I'm okay with tweeps dying. You know, I'm not
okay with people dying, but tweets. But tweets, that's some
other thing. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
When they say the phrase they were in the room
where it happened? Is that in italics?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
No, it's in quotation marks. I think it's a reference
to that book by that Trump staffer, in the room
where it happened.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
I think it also, knowing the content and context and
the fact they're calling someone's sweeps, I think it also
might be a Hamilton reference.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Oh my god, are you kidding.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Herd Hamilton's in Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Oh yeah, there is from Hamilton and Hamilton.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I was on one of those streamers and I watched
the I.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Watched it, stomach it because of living well.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
I couldn't. I've got a lot of thoughts on it.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
He' Julie Corney, and I think he's shouldn't have been
the guy in the in the show, but the room
yourself shouldn't be there whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
The room where it happened is the White House memoir
of John Bolton, former National Security advisor. So they're either
at John Bolton reference either way, I'm not.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
It's definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Question guys and girls, everyone, do you want us?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Do you want us to take you?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Seriously? Don't call yourself sweeps.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Don't get yourself sweeps and don't reference either Hamilton or
John Bolton legal filing.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Don't pitch yeah the first three sentences.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Like you are alleging that Elon Musk ordered you to
violate California building codes in a way that put human
lives at risk. You don't need to be tweet like.
We don't need to make this like like I'm just
I'm very frustrated.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
You don't need to put on a pants suit and
sing hallelujah.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, yeah, of the fucking Twitter old guard. Yeah, very funny.
I expected to be more immediately on board with the
people suing Elon Musk because I hate him so much,
but they have done the hard work of making me
right in the middle so far I am. Yeah, I
(08:02):
am steering down the median on a fucking crotch rocket
at the at the moment, so in ways that potentially
put tweep lives at risk in building the Twitter hotel
rooms Musk wanted for tweets he would be pushing to
work through the night. Plaintiff Hawkins was forced to resign
after Musk and his transition team fundamentally changed the nature
of her job and threatened her professional reputation by directing
(08:24):
Twitter to breach its leases and essentially steal space from
its landlords. Elon doesn't play rent. They're still doing a
little I'm stealing space from landlords I don't know.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Again, I'm very frustrated against.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Because like the thing that Elon's that comes next is
like he one of Elon's transition team members told Hawkins
Elon doesn't pay rent, And Elon told me he would
only pay rent over his dead body, And I'm frustrated
at the degree of like again, especially since he spent
so much time like flipping out over crime and San Francisco.
(09:01):
He's like this big law and order fascist weirdo. Now
the fact that he just refuses to pay rent, like
fuck him, Like that makes me extra angry for Elon Musk,
but also, like, I don't know the the it is
hard to make someone get too outraged about stealing from
like a giant corporate landlord. Yes, there's a lot of
tension here if you want to, if you want me
(09:22):
to be like, well, maybe there's one cool corporate landlord
I don't know send in like mercenaries to force Twitter
out of their offices. Right, there's an impound their servers.
You know, like be a real asshole about it, and
then at least you'll be a cool, like corporate ghoul.
You know, go for it, guys, do do what Think about?
Think about what that guy, the bad guy in RoboCop
(09:45):
would do in this situation. You know, he would send
he would send Bodiker in to like fucking beat the
shit out of Elon Musk when he's having a cocaine party.
You know that that's what he'd you know, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
Yeah, if at two oh nine destroyed Twitter's offices, I'd
be like, all.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Right, well, I'd be like, what okay, Okay, one landlord
gets to stay a landlord. So both Killian and Hawkins
were told that from Musk, the fact that Twitter was
legally or contractually obligated to pay a particular sum would
be irrelevant to the decision of whether to actually pay
it when that amount came due. That must operate it
(10:23):
on a zero cost basis, and that Twitter would therefore
simply decide afresh for each significant expense whether or not
it wanted to pay what it owed. This seems very illegal,
but he's got enough money that it's not right, like
because he can just hold it up in court for
forever and yeah, it'll be fine. It's very frustrating. There's
(10:44):
a lot of people on the streets in San Francisco
because they couldn't pay you know, what they owed in
rent or whatever, and Elon's just going to continue advocating
they'd be put in death camps. I guess that's cool, exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It is interesting how differently we treat these two very
different Uh.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yes, examples of rentivation, Like.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I would be surprised if the total number of people
evicted in San Francisco last year, like the amount that
they owed that got them evicted, equalled what Musk has
failed to pay on his properties.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, it's just thinking about yeah, yeah, anyway, okay.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And back on board with yeah, back on with the tweets.
The tweets say that Musk flatly refused to pay them.
They're contractually required severance. This was severance that Twitter and
Musk had in order to induce tweets to stay through
the close of the merger, promise would be paid if
Musk conducted a layoff in which Twitter and ex Holdings
had bound themselves to pay under the terms of the
merger agreement. Seems clear that they owed this money. Uh.
(11:45):
And basically the alliation is that Musk never even intended
to pay people, right, Like he was just lying to
get people to work without pay, which is like, I
don't know, that's in like the the neighborhood. That's like,
that's that's that's that's illegal, Like you're not allowed to
make people work without getting them.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
No, I would say, it's not just in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
It's staunchly like, yeah, that seems like crimey.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
That's like the town.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Even if it's not crimey, it's unethical and immoral and
he's a bad person.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
I'll just there.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, but how could it not be crimey?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah. Musk went so far as to insist publicly that
tweeps he fired are not entitled to any severance at
all beyond warn act notice. In hindsight, it appears that
he also inserted a legally ineffective, specific no third party
beneficiaries clause in the merger agreements provisions relating to severance
in a failed attempt to prevent tweeps from enforcing those provisions.
Plaintiffs bring this action for a declaratory judgment against the
(12:41):
merger agreement and the related but independent promises and representations
to the tweeps entitle them to the promise severance to
recover that severance, as well as punitive damages for defendant's
flavorant bad faith. YadA YadA YadA. They quote a bunch
of laws that Musk probably did in fact break. Yeah,
So uh we go in we we detail the case
(13:02):
of like a couple of these these people. They're just
kind of like listing their work histories, which I don't
feel like we need to know for any particularly reading. Yeah,
worked at Twitter, spent a lot of time as a
as a tweeper, tweeping up, you know, pretty hard. Defendant
Musk is, on information and belief, a citizen of the
state of Texas residing in Bokachka, Texas. I wonder how
(13:24):
much time he spends in Boka, Chica. But people have
been allowed to fake being from Texas for forever. We
had a whole president do it once. Look at look
at look it up people. All right, So now we're
up to the factual background statement here. This litigation arises
out of Twitter's Sorry My Mouse. This litigation arises out
of Twitter's attempt to avoid paying its ex employees. The
(13:45):
Sefarence that promised them. Twitter made these promises many times
and in many ways. Twitter made these promises in their
initial offer letters to the plaintiffs. Twitter made the same
promise explicit in its agreement to sell the company to Musk,
negotiating for a clause in the agreement that protected its
employees by ensuring they would have seen received seference at
least as favorable during the post merger period as they
had under the old management. And Twitter man went out
(14:06):
of its way to make additional promises and representations to
its employees to allay their concerns in advance of its
purchase by Musk and to convince them to stay employed
at Twitter. Penning the close of this transaction, Twitter broke
all these promises, breaching its enforceable agreements with its former
employees in the process. Now I'm going to say this
right now, I suspect the people who sold Twitter to Musk,
the former people running it, the former board, were well
(14:29):
aware that all these employees were going to get fucked
and simply didn't care because they got their bag right.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, that's why the deal was made. Because I have
had them so much.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I don't have any sympathy or uh. I don't know
care for the people that sold Twitter in general.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
No, no, I mean I I yeah. It seems like
they ought to be liable to some extent too. There's
some sort of due diligence they should. I'm sure they
did enough legally. I don't think they're actually they actually
have any exposure there. I just think it's in more. Yeah.
So it just kind of goes through the details of
the merger, the details of like how they set up
(15:07):
this severance agreement. So Twitter committed to providing employees with
two months base salary or incentive based salary for sales employees,
pro rated performance bonuses through as through all as though
all triggers for such bonuses has been hit. The cash
value of any RSUs those are like internal stock units
that would have vested within three months of separation cash
(15:28):
contribution through the continuance of healthcare coverage. So it's like
a pretty good severance agreement. I think it's better than
we got it cracked. Yeah you know that right, Yeah,
that sounds what they.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I can't speak to that because they never hired me.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah. Well they yeah, I corporate America something none of
us have any issues with. I don't know all these tweets. Yeah,
these tweets seemed like they were promised a pretty sweet
deal if they stayed on to like ensure the company
didn't fall apart right before the deal and then Musk
immediately months Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So they
(16:07):
list some of the different things that like, you know,
Musk said during the process of like that whole back
and forth of or whether or not he was going
to acquire it. The lawsuit against Twitter. Okay, here we
get to a point where we have that's titled Twitter's
employees are worried about the pending Musk takeover, and Twitter
makes representations to address their concerns. This should be some
inside gossip. With the promise of Twitter being acquired by
(16:30):
one of its fiercest critics, many tweets were understandably very
concerned about their future, particularly the particular about the potential
effects of the merger and their jobs. Layoffs had already
been discussed as a possibility even prior to the acquisition,
and it was widely reported that cuts would be needed
as a consequence of the additional debt that Twitter was
incurring as part of the acquisition. Given his criticisms, it
was also viewed that Musk would make additional material changes
(16:51):
at Twitter. Twitter took these concerns very seriously. If a
significant number of tweets were worried enough about their future
to seek new employment, it would harm Twitter's ability to
continue to function smoothly while the deal was in process.
Twitter therefore took several steps to reassure its employees they
negotiated this merger agreement d D. Let me get down
(17:13):
here to the next set of good stuff. Twitter also
benefited from a degree of stability via employee retention during
the pendency of the acquisition and the related litigation that
reduced the chances of an acquisition threatening material adverse event,
protecting the chances the deal would be consummated, and Musk
and extending an offer to entice employees to stay pending
(17:34):
his acquisition, also received stability the promise of a company
that would be when he completed his takeover, largely in
the condition it was made before the offer, allowing him
to begin to reshape Twitter from a stable foundation. Nevertheless,
tweeps remained concerned about the consequences of the acquisition. Twitter
issued an acquisition FAQ to provide employees with a resource
The FAQ detailed reassurances and representations to employees regarding their compensation,
(17:56):
how equity grants would be handled. It explicitly stated that
in the event of a layoff, any employees whose job
would be is impacted would be eligible for a severance.
They had meetings and stuff about this. Twitter orally communicated
to its employees that Musk had made the severance stability
promise and the merger agreement. Yeah. Yeah. At one point
(18:17):
to tweet posted to Twitter's internal slack, tagging Twitter's c
suite leadership and communicating that the details of twitter severance
would be critical to employees' decisions to remain pending the
close of the merger. So yeah, they're really building a
case here that, like the entire both the value to
the people who owned Twitter and ran it previously and
the value to Musk was reliant upon folks staying and
(18:39):
keeping the site stable, and that they had to do that.
To do that, both of them basically had to run
a con on the workforce of Twitter. I think it's
been more of a con on Musk than it has
been on like He's It has kind of fallen apart
for him as well, because the news just came out
today that the company's valued at about a third of
(19:00):
what it was when he bought it.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
But I laughed out loud.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Both of them definitely like had to screw over all
of these people in order to in order to carry
out their plans. Like, it seems pretty clear what was
going on all around here.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Yeah, they just wanted everyone to shut up so they
could make the deal happen.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, Almost immediately upon a Musk's arrival at Twitter, he
instead purported to terminate executives for cause on information and belief.
This occurred in some cases within hours of the takeover.
In fact, on information and belief, Musk did not even
intend to have Twitter pay the director's office and officers
in dimnification and insurance premiums as required by section six
point six of the merger agreement. On information and belief,
(19:44):
a Twitter employee with access to Twitter's accounts and capacity
to execute the payment, made that payment despite musk specific
objections preventing a brief a breach of the merger agreement,
and this employee was fired for doing so. So. Basically,
Musk was required to pay like in dimnification and insurance
premiums as part of the merger agreement, which is like
that's something he's required to do under state law to
(20:06):
keep the company like functioning legally. And he directed an
employee to like cancel the payment because he's saying basically,
don't pay money for anything. And so this person follows
the law and makes the payment and Musk fires them. Wow,
very funny. Yeah, leadership, Yeah, no, no, yeah, so obviously,
(20:28):
I mean it is that yeah, yeah, what's episode?
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Oh just that broken brain thing of just like you're
so rich and powerful and you have this idea of
yourself and your view that you're like, just don't do it,
just don't do anything right, just like it doesn't matter,
Like the idea of like buying this company and just
like we're not going to spend any money and if
(20:55):
we do, you're fired.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
It's like the the idea that would work out for him.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Well, just when you're that rich and powerful, you get
away with lots of stuff.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Look at him not paying rent.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
I mean yeah, and you.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Think you can and I mean maybe he can, and
nothing will come of this.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
It's like, are you really? Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
It's interesting also seeing all this stuff because first we
saw it, as one might call it secondhand news.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Yeah, her back in.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
The day when you get like these little little tidbits,
these little snippets of like, yeah, this person said that
he did this, and just seeing it all laid out
in this legal complaint is interesting.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
It is interesting, and I think so a lot of
this is kind of going over the stuff that was
reported one way or the other, like as it was happening.
So if you don't remember, back on November third, twenty
twenty two, after the acquisition, he sent out an email
basically saying, Hey, we're going to have a meeting tomorrow
and you'll know who's getting shit canned. The next day,
November fourth, they fired half of the company. It seems
(21:59):
like the layoffs were largely organized by SpaceX and Tesla
employees who sort of like came in and help him
build lists. Yeah, yeah, he brought in That's what's alleged
here at leaset on information Belief. Musk. You used engineers
from his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX to help determine
which tweets would be included in the November fourth layoff and.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Then sorry, putting engineers in charge of that.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, especially since so much of the jobs aren't engineering,
like for example being the people who pay to keep
mandated and shit.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Yeah no, it's just like this like weird like billionaire
engineer brain.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Imagine like people in HR or people that are trained
for these kinds of conversation is one thing, but engineers.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah, also like the people who are worse at I
don't know, managing, Like do.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
You think that they just got people in the room
and played go your own way?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, you should go your own way? Man? What a
b No, you nailed it. So yeah yeah yeah. So
you know, at this point, Twitter's been been gutted, you know,
much like a big game hunter who gets impaled by
a tusk.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
There we go, like TV Nicks in that breakup. But
I like you, well yeah that's.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
That all that works too. So the next thing that
happens is they start firing people after this like first
wave of layoffs. You know, those are they're agreeing to
pay severance and they're gonna fuck with a lot of
those people on severance. But in order to avoid paying severance,
the next thing that that Twitter does is they start
over the next few days firing even more people saying
(23:44):
they were in violation of Twitter policy. These are four
cause terminations, so like they don't have to do the
same things they have to do in like layoffs are
e severance. So it's I mean, it's it's it's fuckery.
It's also like bad for people's careers. It's one thing
if like yeah, that company, the the the boss gutted
(24:05):
it and everybody got laid off, but they didn't necessarily
do anything wrong that doesn't necessarily hurt your chances of
getting hired again, as opposed to like getting fired for
violating company policy, which can which is yeah yeah, or
for paying a mandated insurance yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You know who does follow the law.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Possibly products and services?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It has to be it is, it is we most
do they nearly all of them do. I mean we are.
We are sponsored by the Sina Loa cartel, who have
a little bit of a history of rule breaking, but
for the most part, all of our sponsors are law abiding.
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Or girl, m m.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Good stuff, good stuff. Oh, we're back, We're back, and
we're going to continue because, as our fans always say,
don't stop. Oh boy, yeah yeah, yeah, this is really
(25:22):
the episode of some of our fans as dreams. Oh boy,
we should.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
We can't break this too far.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, no, yeah, there out, So I accidentally started playing rumors.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
On my phone.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, I mean a lot of the allegations against Musk
are based on well, you know, the phrase they use
is based on information and belief. But what is that
if not rumors? Too much readful in it?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Like yeah it ugh, yes, we're having fun.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Good stuff. Good stuff. So the next thing that Musk
announces is that Twitter's ending its remote work policy and
all workers have to immediately report to a physical Twitter office.
This was a real problem for people who lived like
hundreds of miles from Twitter offices and could not do this.
Musk updated the policy after this was pointed out to
him and said that Twitter would allow for a transition
(26:22):
period for remote workers who live too far away to
move to a location closer to Twitter. That's a good
decision to like, uproot your entire life and move across
country for a job that appears to be collapsing.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
Every map does need you there, yeah, and probably won't
exist in like six ynths.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That seems like a good call. Later, the policy morphed
into one in which managers could allow their reports to
work remotely if they chose to, but would themselves be
fired if the employees they allowed to work from home
did not perform up to Musk's undefined and unarticulated standards.
What a great working environment.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Well, he's just a very articulate person.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
No, no, he's dumb and kind of an asshole.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Yeah, so the owner of a social media communication platform
is so bad at communicating, Well, he's not.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
He's he bought it, you know, like he purchased. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's pretty cool. So in mid November, Musk sends
another email with a link to an online form and
an ultimatum. Any Twitter employee who wanted to keep their
job at Twitter would need to affirmatively indicate their consent
by checking a box on an online form to a
more hardcore working environment, which would mean long hours at
(27:37):
high intensity and in a transparent attempt to avoid the
severance obligation to which he had bound himself, Musk unilaterally
decreed that employees who did not affirmatively check the box
would be deemed to have voluntarily resigned in exchanged for
two months of non working leave in a single month's
post separation pay. That's cool.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
What, Yeah, How you run a company? You show your
employees that you're gonna do a good job.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Well, it's really important.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Doesn't he want people to like have kids and raise
a family, but like he also want them to like
spend like twelve hours a day sleeping at the office.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah, I'm not sure that.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Does he want everybody to have kids and raise a
family also? Well, also types of people that have kids
and rais also have.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Fraternity and maternity leave for his employees as well.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
But he doesn't want his employees doing that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Other people have contradictions that one is, yeah, vaguely, other
people should be doing that.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So, as part of this wave of layoffs, a substantial
number of employees were laid off because they did not
immediately affirmatively agree to the material changes to their working
conditions that Musk had demanded, and yet that still wasn't enough.
After the November seventeenth layoff, Musk again turned to engineers
from his other companies to conduct code reviews of co
written code written by Twitter employees. The code reviews were
(28:54):
clear pretext to attempt additional four cause firings. The reviewers
lacked the context to meaningful evaluate the code, and the
reviews were completed in an amount of time. It was
clearly insufficient for any good faith approach of the task.
After the code reviews, Twitter fired multiple employees on the
pretext that their work was not up to standard. Many
of those employees had received uniformly positive performance reviews prior
(29:16):
to being fired. Other employees were put on performance improvement
plans in a transparent attempt to lay the groundwork for
future four cause firings. The slap dash bad faith nature
of these reviews was open and obvious. Some managers acknowledged
that they were instructed to stack rank their employees so
that at least some of the employees in each group
would be fired or placed on performance improvement plans, even
if all were performing adequately. Other managers specifically informed employees
(29:39):
that the managers had placed on pips that the employees
could keep doing what they were doing because their performance
did not require improvement. Other managers could not identify the
standard by which they had assessed particular performance as requiring improvement,
and at least some fired employees were informed that they
had been fired by mistake and asked to return to work.
All told on information and believe Twitter laid off, fired,
(30:00):
or engineered the resignations of over five thousand employees within
less than two months.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
That's beautiful stuff, real, real impressive leadership right there.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I was going to just say, firing all of this
stuff is very time consuming. All of the work that's
being put into fucking over the employees and firing them
and then whoopsies are the ones that arguably too much
(30:34):
attention when there's vital things that need to be done
at the company.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Anyway, Sorry, Cody, what were you going to say?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Oh, no, that's true.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
It's just there's He did that interview, an interview recently
where they talked about this, and basically he's like, yeah,
we're going to try to hire a bunch of people back,
and maybe people we fired will want to come back,
like very recently, Like this is the plan, and it's
just souse. He didn't even like I saw some Twitter
(31:03):
Blue subscribers be like, oh I love I love this because, like,
you know, being able to own your mistakes.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
No, no, no, he didn't say it was a mistake. He
said that he had to do it. This is all.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
This is all in the pretext that like I have
to get rid of this many people. I have to
And now that he did, he's like, well, we'll hire
them back. That's still not admitting the mistake. He's still
saying he had to do it. He's just saying he's
going to do this new thing now.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
And it's very funny that he thinks these people are
going to return to work, because I guarantee you they
are never going back again.
Speaker 5 (31:31):
Oh my god, Katie got Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Here, Oh man, it's just.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Nom. That's something no one has ever said to Elon.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Musk No, no, they know.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Oh fuck. So let's go to the story of one
of the people who's a party to this lawsuit, plaintiff Hawkins.
Hawkins was Twitter's vice president of real Estate and Workplace,
responsible for its office leases and managing its offices. So
you can tell this person's not going to be long
for the company because Elon's no longer dealing with any
of that. Yeah. Uh, debt debt DA DA talks about
(32:22):
her whole career, which I don't really care about, but yeah,
so she's not opposed. It says that she was not
opposed to the merger or the concept of Muscus, Twitter's
new CEO. She received word of the impending merger deal
while on family vacation, didn't know a lot about Musk
at the time. I don't think that's possible, but okay,
it just seems weird that you wouldn't know a lot
about Elon Musk and live in the Bay and the
(32:43):
tech industry.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
But yeah, maybe I guess it is like you cannot
know about him, but you can. He's the Tesla guy.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, he's the Tesla guy. That's probably what she means,
given the uncertainty her focus in the period leading up
to the merger. In the leadership she provided her team
since round one, basic principle, let's focus on doing our
jobs and protecting our people. During the pendency of the merger,
employee attention was a critical concern, as we've talked about Yaha, YadA,
yadda Musk okay at the closing of the As the
(33:12):
closing of the merger approached, Musk's behavior heightened Hawkins' concerns.
He showed up to an all hands meeting exactly once,
arriving late and spending his time talking about extraterrestrials. Oh,
that's so funny, is.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
That the I bet that's the one where he also
talked about gizmos and how he likes gizmos.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
That maybe I think that may come a little bit later,
but it's very clear he was talking about aliens this
whole time, and all of these twoops were just saying,
I don't want to know.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's so right, it's so he's such a work.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
It's just like one of those that he thinks he's
so interesting and like, oh everyone's so boring. I have
great conversations, but he's only got these stock things he has,
like a thing he says about aliens and other thing
he says about simulations, and that's it, Like that's his
idea of like, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Very much like a push button get Bacon attitude to comedy.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
Yeah, but like he thinks it's like this like deep,
like interesting conversation that goes beyond his one like talking
point about it.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
M M. But you know, yep, maybe stuff.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Maybe he's not. Maybe he's fascinating, so.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
He shows up once he bullshits about aliens. Even after
that meeting, Hawkins kept an open mind, hoping that Musk's
odd behavior would not impact his leadership when she took
over Twitter, and the employees were part of his team,
but Hawkins also formed a strong determination to remain at
Twitter at least throughout a new transition period in order
to shepherd her team through the transition. The reality of
Musk's new directives and operation of Twitter almost immediately shattered
(34:43):
that determination. Upon Musk's arrival at Twitter, he brought with
him a transition team of executives and sycophants from his
other companies, from whom Musk directed Twitter's employees to take direction.
This is the transition team. He also brought over Tesla
engineers too. Upon information and belief make retention and termination
to decisions. The transition team decreed that no managers were
allowed to communicate with their teams via Slack, which just
(35:07):
like just nukes the business, right, like, this is the
only way we communicate for most things, and you're like,
nobody gets to do this. They froze all payments to
vendors until they could be verified. No explanations were ever
given as to what this meant or why it was
being done. Yeah, it basically Twitter was just breaching contracts
(35:27):
and mass without like informing the vendors or the employees
communicating with these vendors as to why face with tens
or hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding invoices with
no reasonable expectation of timely payment. Many of these vendors
informed Twitter that they would not be performing further work
for Twitter until those invoices were paid, which is, by
the way, part of why DeSantis's announcement was a failure
(35:48):
is that Twitter hadn't paid a major vendor that was
responsible for like keeping Twitter spaces up and online space. Yeah,
very funny. But you know who does all their vendors
because their vendors are me, they pay you over and
do our ads. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's who I get paid. Yeah,
(36:11):
so help me get paid? H terrible?
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Did you get paid? Did you get paid? H?
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah? We're back and I'm I'm counting up my money.
I'm counting up my money, which is why everyone calls
me the gold dust woman. I don't know that one
was going to be hard to fit in that.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
That's good. That was really good, but I mean a.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Little too much.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
It is your show.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You did? You did both? Miss one that I did
a little bit ago.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
What did you do?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (36:50):
I was.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I was pretty pretty proud about this, but yeah, I've
I've also forgotten which one I did. I missed one.
Listeners you can go search for it. It was. It
was like seven minutes ago. You know, nobody, nobody commented
on it. Pull up the pull up the set list
for rumors and figure out which one I did. That's
a little more. You'll get a prize, You'll get a price.
(37:13):
I'm not going to tell you what it is. And
like Elon Musk, I will probably not follow through with
this promise. But you know, lie funny, Yeah, I'm gonna
I'm telling you sweet little lies man, good stuff. So yeah,
Twitter fired these vendors when they were, like, you know,
(37:36):
had had issue with not getting paid. Musk attempted to
halt the payment of his employees contractually mandated November rs
US like these people were guaranteed by their contracts a
certain like number of vested like internal stock units that
he's just saying, attempting to not pay people. God, what
a piece of shit. Robert Cayden was fired shortly after
(37:58):
the November vest payments went through on information belief. Caden
was fired because of his actions and making the November
RSU payment and compliance with Twitter's obligations over Musk subjections.
Delana Brand, Twitter's chief people officer and Hawkins's direct manager,
handed in her notice within days after the merger closed,
because she was disgusted at how people were being treated honor.
About October thirtieth, twenty twenty two, Hawkins attended a meeting
(38:20):
with Steve Davis, Jared Birchall, and many of Twitter's global leaders.
In that meeting, Davis announced several changes that voted ill
for Hawkins's team in her role at Twitter. First, he
announced that Twitter's sourcing and procurement team should handle all
lease negotiations from that point forward, despite lacking both personnel
and experience sufficient to handle this task. Next, he announced
that the company would no longer be working with brokers
(38:40):
to procure negotiate leases. This choice ran in conflict with
every established standard and practice of commercial real estate management.
And obviously this is like a massive burden on the
in house staff, which has just been like cut viciously.
The only justification given for changes was Elon wants this
very Soon thereafter, Davis informed Hawkins that Twitter needed to
(39:00):
five find five hundred million dollars in annual savings. So
to do this, just a half a billion, Yeah, Sophie,
By the way, I'd like us to find half a
billion dollars in savings this year. For the company. Can
we can we get the team on that, you know, sure? Maybe, yeah,
get the engineers on that. Sure, yeah, yeah, I'm willing
(39:22):
to cut out coffee. Garrison's going to need to find
like three or four hundred million dollars and uh yeah, together,
I think that'll do it. My hundred million dollars in
coffee and another three or four hundred million dollars we
can make it.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Yeah, sure, I think that might be too much coffee anyway.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, I mean you're probably right for my heart. No,
I should just switch to cocaine again. That's that was
just like twenty or thirty million a year.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
So I was gonna say tea maybe maybe switch to te.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Wow, I don't know about that English.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't think Fleetwood Mac
did too much tea, but.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, yeah, rumors wasn't made on Earl Gray, that was
made on China white anyway. To accomplish this, each global
lead was given a massive spreadsheet that had to be
filled out every single day, identifying possible savings opportunities. Hawkins'
spreadsheet covered thirty locations in upwards of fifty leashes. The
(40:20):
pressure to fill in the spreadsheet on time was immense.
Expectations from above made it clear that compliance was prioritized
above accuracy. That's a good You know you're making a
good team when people are like, you don't actually need
to do your job as long as you're on time.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
That is wild.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
That's so funny. That's super funny.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
It's that that Marvel thing where like like five months
ago they were like, we're gonna stop focusing on quantity
and start focusing on quality.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
It's like, yeah, you gotta do it before.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
How would you describe what you were doing prior to this?
Speaker 4 (40:58):
Make sure it's good first.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah, oh god, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty good stuff.
For example, Twitter instructed Hawkins to identify leases for cancelation.
When she identified potential sites and leases that could be
terminated for cost savings, Hawkins and her team took the
time to document risk factors involved in downsizing or terminating
(41:20):
these leases. One of the big things is that like
if you break a lease, certainly you often have to
pay a fee, Like if you do that with your apartment,
you might have to pay like an extra month of rent.
If you do that for like a giant corporate lease
for thousands of workers. It could be significantly more.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Money, one would imagine.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, and it notes when the time came to present
their conclusions, this added context was not well received. When
informed of the risks of termination fees during a meeting
on November third, twenty twenty two, Steve Davis said, well,
we just won't pay those. We just won't pay landlords.
Davis also tour to Hawkins, we just won't pay rent.
Those are direct quotes from Davis per Hawkins's best recollection,
to the extent that they are not word for word
(41:59):
as they're extremely tight paraphrase. Ada Hawkins is shocked because
part of her job, like is reputation based, Like I
am the person managing leases for this company, and we
will make meet our obligations.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah time we paid, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah paid.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
In general we pay again.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
It's one of those things that in order for Elon
to meet his cost saving goals, this woman has to
like destroy her future in the business knowing that she
will immediately get shit canned as soon as possible. It's
just like such a gross guy and way of looking
at people and looking at business like it's hard to
he doesn't look Yeah, no, he is incapable of of
(42:43):
like seeing or caring about human beings.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Which tools or little pieces for him? Yeah, lack of
a plan.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
I guess players only love you when they're playing.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, that's that's what everyone says about Elon Musk.
Speaker 6 (43:00):
So I see it.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
It's okay, a lot of these are going to be
half assed guys, but you know, like we're just not
going to make it all them all work very well.
Unwilling to be involved in, let alone responsible for such thefts,
Hawkins resigned the next day. He is asking her to steal.
She did so despite her internal commitment to remain through
the transition to protect her team, because she had no
(43:23):
other choice. Yeah, I get that. That that kind of
scans like he is saying, I need you to commit
a series of crimes for me. Elon Musk a man
incapable of loyalty.
Speaker 5 (43:33):
So yeah, but that's the other thing, Like there's no
like there's just even if you're like on his good
side at one point.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
It's worth nothing.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
Yeah, it's worth nothing, and you're worth nothing to him.
And as soon as you even.
Speaker 5 (43:47):
Like not even like uh barely a challenge will turn
him around.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
And then you're going who becomes the scapegoat for things. Actually,
in this situation which it hit the fan, you know,
they're more likely to get wrapped up in that. Elon
Musk isn't clearly he invaded all of it. We've all
seen succession, I think, right, we've seen it.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Maybe Robert hasn't.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
No, yeah, it happens. Yeah, I don't know what, Like,
I get why she did what she did. So Killian
is the next person we talked about. Joseph Killian. He
was Twitter's global head of construction and Design. He was
immediately given Hawkins's duties after she quits. He worked directly
(44:32):
with the transition team and was directed by Steve Davis
and Liz Jenkins, who worked for the Boring Company, and
Pablo Mendoza, a venture capitalist who invested with Musk. Yeah,
so that's that's that's cool. Oh god, oh god. Yeah.
I mean it's a big scam, but they still are
a company. They dug that stupid hole in Las Vegas.
(44:52):
I went through. That was like, you dumb as fuck.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
They're not a company anymore.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I mean they have engaged in what are effectively a
series of like roping in local governments to agree to
work with him, and then actually.
Speaker 5 (45:04):
Like ye and pulling it out and then like canceling
other uh yeah, more viable transportation plans.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah, just to fuck with like public transportation. So I
just noted like this guy Killian gets given Hawkins his
job and he's being managed by Steve Davis and Liz
Jenkins who work for the boring company, and then there's
this bit which is amazing. Killian was also directed in
these activities by Nicole Hollander. On information and Belief, Hollander
(45:30):
was not employed by any of Musk's companies. On information
and belief, Hollander is Steve Davis's girlfriend than the mother
of his child. So Musk's Musks like Transition team are
just like hiring their girlfriends to manage the people in
committing real estate fraud.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
It's amazing where it's like, yeah, if you like, say,
my god.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
On information believe, Hollander was living at Twitter headquarters with
Davis and their infant child, who was a older what
the fuck?
Speaker 4 (46:04):
Yeah, family values awesome.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Despite not being employed by any of Musk's companies, Hollander
nonetheless had full instructional authority over Killian and the rest
of his team with regards to the Transition Almost immediately,
Musk's zero cost basis policy reared its head. Killian was
informed by the transition team that he would have to
justify his spin to Musk personally, and that if Musk
was not convinced that the expenses were necessary, he would
simply default on his contractual obligations and let the expenses
(46:30):
go unpaid. In early November, Davis sent a three am
email to fifteen or twenty managers complaining about Twitter's rent obligations,
which totaled one hundred and thirty million annually. And this email,
Davis specifically compared Twitter's rent obligations to Spacexes, noting that
Twitter had one tenth as many employees as SpaceX but
paid five times as much rent annually. Of course, Twitter
had significantly more employees when it first incurred its rent obligations.
(46:54):
Killian quickly became concerned that Musk intended to stop paying
rent on Twitter's outstanding leases, breaching the com tracks and
placing the company at risk of being evicted. Indeed, Musk's attorney,
Alex Spiro gladly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter
landlord Twitter's landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent since
San Francisco was a shithole. Oh my god, is.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
That the only thing you need to not pay rent?
Speaker 6 (47:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:18):
This this city with a fraction of the violent crime,
for example, many parts of Texas.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, it's I was just gonna say, because if that's
the case, I think we could apply it to a
lot of places.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Yeah, I yeah, I'm so. I'm so frustrated by this
man and all of the people around him. Yeah, he
incredibly hateable, old man or a piece of shit whatever.
Musk even went so far as to prevent Twitter from
paying the janitorial staff for the work they had already
(47:50):
provided after the janitors complained about being fired. In essence,
it quickly became clear to Killian that Musk's intended method
of operation was to obtain services from vendors without any
intention of keeping the agreements or paying for services requested
and received. In other words, robbing people like stealing from them, theft,
the thing that he's complained about happening on the streets
(48:11):
of San Francisco.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
Yeah, well, it's okay if you wear a suit and
do it.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yeah, it's great if you wear a suit and do it.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Absolutely again, it's what kind of Yeah, I'm agreeing with you.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
It's yeah, the I really like it.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
I know I'm not wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
I feel like I feel like, if we're going to
have these really fucked up standard ground laws, you know,
where people can basically like commit murder if they feel
like their car is going to get stolen or something,
I feel like you should have the right to do that.
If you're like a janitor working for Elon Musk, like
you should you should be allowed to draw on him. Yeah, yeah,
(48:53):
I think that this is a self defense situation law. Yeah, yeah,
I I whatever, I don't know, this is this is
so disheartening.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
Yeah, it's really it's like really really disgusting.
Speaker 5 (49:05):
Yeah, and just uh, I guess I've seen some of
the uh fail get lifted and sort of like people's
like rose colored glasses on about him be taken off
a bit. But it's just obvious the kind of person
he is, and like how he doesn't really care about
a lot of the stuff he says.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
He cares about. It's just I don't know, it sucks.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Hate it, Yeah, it sucks. He just cares about being. Yeah,
he's he's, he's he sees himself primarily as an entertainer
because for some reason, like all of the worst people
in America, his primary goal is to like be famous
for making people like laugh or whatever. Like it's weird
(49:47):
because like, stand up comedians are the most miserable people
in the world, and also all of the worst richest
people desperately wish they were a stand up comedian. Like
you saw it when fucking what's his name? Uh yeah,
Dave Chappelle brought him out that like, oh, if you
could only yeah, if you could only have an audience
(50:07):
eating out of the palm of your hand, you would
be happier than you've ever been in your life.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
But like, it's the one thing you can't buy.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
And we've talked about that on various shows that we've
been on or have.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
But you know, obviously this was not a cool kid.
He was.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
He's not a well liked person. The only cachet that
he's ever had is his money. He's not even a
smart innovative person. Every idea he's had is someone else's idea.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
That he's tanking. I mean, are any of his businesses
doing well?
Speaker 5 (50:42):
Yeah, you've seen a lot also with like the Ai
quote unquote boom, where it's so clear some of this
is just like, oh, you just wish you were a
little more creative.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Like, yeah, why they hate writers.
Speaker 5 (50:55):
You hate exactly, you hate musicians, you hate creators because
you don't you can't do it well or you're not
praised enough for it or whatever, and so you have
to have the machine do it.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
I think what we actually need to solve most of
our problems a basic income that ensures that like people
could just like paint or make music or do comedy,
uh and survive. And and here's the key part. Then
we use AI to give the people who are worst
at at a fan base so they feel like they're
successful and they don't become yeah yeah, yeah fans. Yeah
(51:40):
they'll they'll never meet them, they do the yeah exactly,
and then we can we don't have a.
Speaker 5 (51:47):
Daily Lives doesn't exist account where they make like oh,
this is a fake person is made with a bunch
of people an audience of them following and clapping and
clicking the like button praising is bad pilot.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Now now I'm envisioning, like I know they're saying that.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
What Now I'm envisioning like a Black Mirror episode where
some journalist is like confused at how there's so many
Ben Shapiro fans of his TV writing, or like how
Elon Musk is such a successful stand up comedian and
he like he cracks the case and then like the
FBI has to come destroy him because you have like
you don't know what we're keeping it like we have
(52:28):
to let them think they're good.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Good, But I mean this scenario, look, was it a
couple of days ago?
Speaker 3 (52:37):
The godfather of AI comes out saying this could be.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Our lead the world and our annilation. No, I'm like,
maybe this is our great positive reframe.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, but you know what's even better than AI providing
a fan base for all of the your too right
wing culture warriors who got into advocating genocide because nobody
laughed at their jokes.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
I don't want to know.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
Yeah, oh well it's you. Oh, it's both of you.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Which is our time to plug stuff?
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (53:17):
I thought it was a time to do one one
less Fleetwood mac reference.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Oh I mean we.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
Could we still can? I did?
Speaker 2 (53:27):
This has been a total has been one of my dreams.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Now, that was bad.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
That was that was that was good. That was good.
I'm proud of.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Being here to stay with you guys.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Oh, we have a show called some More News that
Cody hosts on the YouTube channel and a podcast that
Cody's going to tell you about now.
Speaker 5 (53:48):
It's called some More News. Yeah, you can watch it
on YouTube dot com. Slash the name of the show,
probably and even more News is the name of the
podcast version, which is more of a different kind of show.
But it's the same people where podcasts are available.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah. Yeah, so check them both out.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Check it out.
Speaker 5 (54:10):
Google the names of our names and you'll find all
the stuff that we do.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Google Google Katie Stole, Google Google Cody Johnston, or google
them by their nicknames see Money and k Money, which
is exclusively how I refer to them in private.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (54:27):
Time.
Speaker 5 (54:28):
I don't really respond because I always forget, but yeah,
that's how I type it out when I'm saying I
just call you both, come money.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
But they seem to know, Oh, I definitely that works,
Come Money, Come honey.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
I just have one last thing to say to you both,
and it's that you make love and fun.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
Ah, there we go, There we go. Yeah, come back
for the next part of this series, when we'll be
talking about another album. I don't know which other album.
I don't know. How do you guys feel about the
dire straits? I only know one song that they wrote.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
I only know a couple songs limited.
Speaker 4 (55:11):
I only know money for nothing, limited references available.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Well, well we'll work again. We just do rumors again.
Speaker 6 (55:21):
There was the album and you know what's not an
album but doesn't have ads? Our cooler Zone Media Apple
premium subscription channel you can subscribe to.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Now Robert say something. Yeah, I am not secondhand news,
but you know what's first hand news is if you
get a subscription to cooler Zone Media on Apple's whatever
their thing, then you don't get ads, and then the
news isn't secondhand. It's just coming straight to you unfiltered.
(55:59):
You know. H. Every time I accidentally say something offensive,
we leave it in for you guys. That's right. It's
a lot of piss. Yeah, that's that's my.
Speaker 3 (56:17):
New piss out of a podcast.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
U when we say it the way we do. Yeah, yeah,
it's really not bones Yeah, uh definitely not. Okay, anyway,
that's been an episode.
Speaker 6 (56:34):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's fleet would my Max? I'm Robert Evans and this
is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we talk about
the album Rumors, which was written by a bunch of
people who when they were making it, we're all bastards
to one another. Uh oh yeah. With me with me
today to talk about Rumors is a Cody Johnston and
(00:22):
Katie Stole. How are we doing today?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Everybody so good, so thrilled to be here to talk
about Rumors with you.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
You know what I always think about.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I always think about how hard it must have been
to be Christy McVie. Yeah, oh god, yeah, you got
Stevie Nicks there.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
She was wonderful. R I p uh huh, absolutely wonderful.
You got a little out shown shined.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, yeah, outshun. It's hard. It's hard to it's hard
to be up against that, you know. I'm sure she
was aware of it, and I think that I think
that that bleeds through. That's part of the part of
the feel that uh you know that that that the
album has. But who's favorite song on Rumors? Favorite song?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
What?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
What? What do we got? Is everyone just going to
say the chain I.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Was gonna say I was going to say.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
It's too hard to not.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Great about.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
I was talking about this over the weekend, just like
Flo Back in general, they're an amazing band because like
you'll hear a song and you'll know that it's necessarily
Fleetwood Mac because they've got such a wide range sound
and vocalists.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
But yeah, I was gonna say the Chain.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, it's hard, but there's a lot. Yes, it's the Chain.
Are you talking? I also like throw your own way?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, jam a woman old A side and B side?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Are we talking old dust woman? Like there's A and
B Why would why would you split them up? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Dreams, I'm sorry, there's so many.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Dreams, Silver Sobers. Yeah, Secondhand News I think would be
mine after after the Chain. That's just such a fucking banger.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
You're right, there's Second News.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh my god, what a great album, What an incredible album.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Should we start playing it now?
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Just listen to to rumors and think about how all
of the lives lost in the cocaine industry were worth it?
Thank god, thank god. No, we should probably get on.
This is uh, you know, a podcast, you know what,
you know what the business is, right, We've been doing
this for five years. You guys have been on dozens
of times. Probably Now we're doing a little bit of
(02:42):
a different thing this year. We have another court case
to go over. The last time I had y'all both on,
we talked about the big lawsuit against Fox News, and
we went through the legal filing that Dominion's lawyers had
against that after all the discovery. Today we are reading
through a legal complaint from Wolf from Arnold, Eric Frozy,
Tracy Hawkins, Joseph Killian, Laura, Shan Pitite, Lars and Andrew
(03:07):
schlakesher Man. Why did all of you have complicated names
to say? Unbelievable? So these guys are all honestly yeah, yeah,
I'm I'm against them already. Oh wait, no, they're suing
Elon Musk, so I'm back on their side. So each
of these people are former longtime employees of Twitter, and
I'm very frustrated by this legal document from the start,
(03:30):
because the first sentence of the introduction reads, plaintiffs are
each longtime former employees of Twitter, and then in parentheses
colloquially and hereafter referred to as tweeps. Wait, the tweets,
they're the tweets.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
T sweeps.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh, tweets, but they're choosing to be referred to as tweeps.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
That is too tweet. That's too tweet.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah, waity, what is.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Going on with you? Is it that like they legitimately
had so much pride in old Twitter that they had
to do this because it's a bad decision, like legally legal.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Did did the tweets decide to call themselves the tweets?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I can't imagine their lawyer insisted on it, right, It depends.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
That was a big part of the culture, right there
was it was that was used to talk about them,
and it was on all their little merchant stuff. Yeah,
but we're talking in the law.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Maybe you don't need to do that.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, maybe you could.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Yeah the alleys you want to be taken seriously, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
They could have.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I mean, twits is right there, but I guess right
there on connotation the twarps.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah. So you know, uh, these these people who the
the lawsuit and forms has have more than sixty years
of collective experience working for the company, were all either
fired or constructively discharged by Twitter right after Musk took over.
Some of these guys were pretty senior. There's a vice
president in there, there's a global lead in there when
(04:58):
they they got ship quote, and due to that seniority,
some of them were in the room where it happened.
After Musk's takeover of Twitter, privy to and participants in
high level discussions and deliberations among Twitter's new leadership. After
the merger led by Musk and the cadres of sycophants
who were internally referred to as the Transition Team, Twitter's
new leadership deliberately, specifically and repeatedly announced their intentions to
(05:21):
breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations.
And they put those words into action. Plaintiff Killium was
forced to resign from Twitter after being repeatedly and specifically
directed to violate California's building codes in ways that potentially
put tweep lives at risk. See, if you say it
like that, you're making a very serious allegation. And I
(05:44):
can't take it seriously when people's lives, yeah, lives.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Because I was immediate like tweep yeah. No.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Also, I'm okay with tweeps dying. You know, I'm not
okay with people dying, but tweets. But tweets, that's some
other thing. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
When they say the phrase they were in the room
where it happened? Is that in italics?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
No, it's in quotation marks. I think it's a reference
to that book by that Trump staffer, in the room
where it happened.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
I think it also, knowing the content and context and
the fact they're calling someone's sweeps, I think it also
might be a Hamilton reference.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Oh my god, are you kidding.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Herd Hamilton's in Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Oh yeah, there is from Hamilton and Hamilton.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I was on one of those streamers and I watched
the I.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Watched it, stomach it because of living well.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
I couldn't. I've got a lot of thoughts on it.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
He' Julie Corney, and I think he's shouldn't have been
the guy in the in the show, but the room
yourself shouldn't be there whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
The room where it happened is the White House memoir
of John Bolton, former National Security advisor. So they're either
at John Bolton reference either way, I'm not.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
It's definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Question guys and girls, everyone, do you want us?
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Do you want us to take you?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Seriously? Don't call yourself sweeps.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Don't get yourself sweeps and don't reference either Hamilton or
John Bolton legal filing.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Don't pitch yeah the first three sentences.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Like you are alleging that Elon Musk ordered you to
violate California building codes in a way that put human
lives at risk. You don't need to be tweet like.
We don't need to make this like like I'm just
I'm very frustrated.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
You don't need to put on a pants suit and
sing hallelujah.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, yeah, of the fucking Twitter old guard. Yeah, very funny.
I expected to be more immediately on board with the
people suing Elon Musk because I hate him so much,
but they have done the hard work of making me
right in the middle so far I am. Yeah, I
(08:02):
am steering down the median on a fucking crotch rocket
at the at the moment, so in ways that potentially
put tweep lives at risk in building the Twitter hotel
rooms Musk wanted for tweets he would be pushing to
work through the night. Plaintiff Hawkins was forced to resign
after Musk and his transition team fundamentally changed the nature
of her job and threatened her professional reputation by directing
(08:24):
Twitter to breach its leases and essentially steal space from
its landlords. Elon doesn't play rent. They're still doing a
little I'm stealing space from landlords I don't know.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Again, I'm very frustrated against.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Because like the thing that Elon's that comes next is
like he one of Elon's transition team members told Hawkins
Elon doesn't pay rent, And Elon told me he would
only pay rent over his dead body, And I'm frustrated
at the degree of like again, especially since he spent
so much time like flipping out over crime and San Francisco.
(09:01):
He's like this big law and order fascist weirdo. Now
the fact that he just refuses to pay rent, like
fuck him, Like that makes me extra angry for Elon Musk,
but also, like, I don't know the the it is
hard to make someone get too outraged about stealing from
like a giant corporate landlord. Yes, there's a lot of
tension here if you want to, if you want me
(09:22):
to be like, well, maybe there's one cool corporate landlord
I don't know send in like mercenaries to force Twitter
out of their offices. Right, there's an impound their servers.
You know, like be a real asshole about it, and
then at least you'll be a cool, like corporate ghoul.
You know, go for it, guys, do do what Think about?
Think about what that guy, the bad guy in RoboCop
(09:45):
would do in this situation. You know, he would send
he would send Bodiker in to like fucking beat the
shit out of Elon Musk when he's having a cocaine party.
You know that that's what he'd you know, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
Yeah, if at two oh nine destroyed Twitter's offices, I'd
be like, all.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Right, well, I'd be like, what okay, Okay, one landlord
gets to stay a landlord. So both Killian and Hawkins
were told that from Musk, the fact that Twitter was
legally or contractually obligated to pay a particular sum would
be irrelevant to the decision of whether to actually pay
it when that amount came due. That must operate it
(10:23):
on a zero cost basis, and that Twitter would therefore
simply decide afresh for each significant expense whether or not
it wanted to pay what it owed. This seems very illegal,
but he's got enough money that it's not right, like
because he can just hold it up in court for
forever and yeah, it'll be fine. It's very frustrating. There's
(10:44):
a lot of people on the streets in San Francisco
because they couldn't pay you know, what they owed in
rent or whatever, and Elon's just going to continue advocating
they'd be put in death camps. I guess that's cool, exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It is interesting how differently we treat these two very
different Uh.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yes, examples of rentivation, Like.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I would be surprised if the total number of people
evicted in San Francisco last year, like the amount that
they owed that got them evicted, equalled what Musk has
failed to pay on his properties.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, it's just thinking about yeah, yeah, anyway, okay.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And back on board with yeah, back on with the tweets.
The tweets say that Musk flatly refused to pay them.
They're contractually required severance. This was severance that Twitter and
Musk had in order to induce tweets to stay through
the close of the merger, promise would be paid if
Musk conducted a layoff in which Twitter and ex Holdings
had bound themselves to pay under the terms of the
merger agreement. Seems clear that they owed this money. Uh.
(11:45):
And basically the alliation is that Musk never even intended
to pay people, right, Like he was just lying to
get people to work without pay, which is like, I
don't know, that's in like the the neighborhood. That's like,
that's that's that's that's illegal, Like you're not allowed to
make people work without getting them.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
No, I would say, it's not just in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
It's staunchly like, yeah, that seems like crimey.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
That's like the town.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Even if it's not crimey, it's unethical and immoral and
he's a bad person.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
I'll just there.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, but how could it not be crimey?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah. Musk went so far as to insist publicly that
tweeps he fired are not entitled to any severance at
all beyond warn act notice. In hindsight, it appears that
he also inserted a legally ineffective, specific no third party
beneficiaries clause in the merger agreements provisions relating to severance
in a failed attempt to prevent tweeps from enforcing those provisions.
Plaintiffs bring this action for a declaratory judgment against the
(12:41):
merger agreement and the related but independent promises and representations
to the tweeps entitle them to the promise severance to
recover that severance, as well as punitive damages for defendant's
flavorant bad faith. YadA YadA YadA. They quote a bunch
of laws that Musk probably did in fact break. Yeah,
So uh we go in we we detail the case
(13:02):
of like a couple of these these people. They're just
kind of like listing their work histories, which I don't
feel like we need to know for any particularly reading. Yeah,
worked at Twitter, spent a lot of time as a
as a tweeper, tweeping up, you know, pretty hard. Defendant
Musk is, on information and belief, a citizen of the
state of Texas residing in Bokachka, Texas. I wonder how
(13:24):
much time he spends in Boka, Chica. But people have
been allowed to fake being from Texas for forever. We
had a whole president do it once. Look at look
at look it up people. All right, So now we're
up to the factual background statement here. This litigation arises
out of Twitter's Sorry My Mouse. This litigation arises out
of Twitter's attempt to avoid paying its ex employees. The
(13:45):
Sefarence that promised them. Twitter made these promises many times
and in many ways. Twitter made these promises in their
initial offer letters to the plaintiffs. Twitter made the same
promise explicit in its agreement to sell the company to Musk,
negotiating for a clause in the agreement that protected its
employees by ensuring they would have seen received seference at
least as favorable during the post merger period as they
had under the old management. And Twitter man went out
(14:06):
of its way to make additional promises and representations to
its employees to allay their concerns in advance of its
purchase by Musk and to convince them to stay employed
at Twitter. Penning the close of this transaction, Twitter broke
all these promises, breaching its enforceable agreements with its former
employees in the process. Now I'm going to say this
right now, I suspect the people who sold Twitter to Musk,
the former people running it, the former board, were well
(14:29):
aware that all these employees were going to get fucked
and simply didn't care because they got their bag right.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, that's why the deal was made. Because I have
had them so much.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I don't have any sympathy or uh. I don't know
care for the people that sold Twitter in general.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
No, no, I mean I I yeah. It seems like
they ought to be liable to some extent too. There's
some sort of due diligence they should. I'm sure they
did enough legally. I don't think they're actually they actually
have any exposure there. I just think it's in more. Yeah.
So it just kind of goes through the details of
the merger, the details of like how they set up
(15:07):
this severance agreement. So Twitter committed to providing employees with
two months base salary or incentive based salary for sales employees,
pro rated performance bonuses through as through all as though
all triggers for such bonuses has been hit. The cash
value of any RSUs those are like internal stock units
that would have vested within three months of separation cash
(15:28):
contribution through the continuance of healthcare coverage. So it's like
a pretty good severance agreement. I think it's better than
we got it cracked. Yeah you know that right, Yeah,
that sounds what they.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I can't speak to that because they never hired me.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah. Well they yeah, I corporate America something none of
us have any issues with. I don't know all these tweets. Yeah,
these tweets seemed like they were promised a pretty sweet
deal if they stayed on to like ensure the company
didn't fall apart right before the deal and then Musk
immediately months Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So they
(16:07):
list some of the different things that like, you know,
Musk said during the process of like that whole back
and forth of or whether or not he was going
to acquire it. The lawsuit against Twitter. Okay, here we
get to a point where we have that's titled Twitter's
employees are worried about the pending Musk takeover, and Twitter
makes representations to address their concerns. This should be some
inside gossip. With the promise of Twitter being acquired by
(16:30):
one of its fiercest critics, many tweets were understandably very
concerned about their future, particularly the particular about the potential
effects of the merger and their jobs. Layoffs had already
been discussed as a possibility even prior to the acquisition,
and it was widely reported that cuts would be needed
as a consequence of the additional debt that Twitter was
incurring as part of the acquisition. Given his criticisms, it
was also viewed that Musk would make additional material changes
(16:51):
at Twitter. Twitter took these concerns very seriously. If a
significant number of tweets were worried enough about their future
to seek new employment, it would harm Twitter's ability to
continue to function smoothly while the deal was in process.
Twitter therefore took several steps to reassure its employees they
negotiated this merger agreement d D. Let me get down
(17:13):
here to the next set of good stuff. Twitter also
benefited from a degree of stability via employee retention during
the pendency of the acquisition and the related litigation that
reduced the chances of an acquisition threatening material adverse event,
protecting the chances the deal would be consummated, and Musk
and extending an offer to entice employees to stay pending
(17:34):
his acquisition, also received stability the promise of a company
that would be when he completed his takeover, largely in
the condition it was made before the offer, allowing him
to begin to reshape Twitter from a stable foundation. Nevertheless,
tweeps remained concerned about the consequences of the acquisition. Twitter
issued an acquisition FAQ to provide employees with a resource
The FAQ detailed reassurances and representations to employees regarding their compensation,
(17:56):
how equity grants would be handled. It explicitly stated that
in the event of a layoff, any employees whose job
would be is impacted would be eligible for a severance.
They had meetings and stuff about this. Twitter orally communicated
to its employees that Musk had made the severance stability
promise and the merger agreement. Yeah. Yeah. At one point
(18:17):
to tweet posted to Twitter's internal slack, tagging Twitter's c
suite leadership and communicating that the details of twitter severance
would be critical to employees' decisions to remain pending the
close of the merger. So yeah, they're really building a
case here that, like the entire both the value to
the people who owned Twitter and ran it previously and
the value to Musk was reliant upon folks staying and
(18:39):
keeping the site stable, and that they had to do that.
To do that, both of them basically had to run
a con on the workforce of Twitter. I think it's
been more of a con on Musk than it has
been on like He's It has kind of fallen apart
for him as well, because the news just came out
today that the company's valued at about a third of
(19:00):
what it was when he bought it.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
But I laughed out loud.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Both of them definitely like had to screw over all
of these people in order to in order to carry
out their plans. Like, it seems pretty clear what was
going on all around here.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Yeah, they just wanted everyone to shut up so they
could make the deal happen.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, Almost immediately upon a Musk's arrival at Twitter, he
instead purported to terminate executives for cause on information and belief.
This occurred in some cases within hours of the takeover.
In fact, on information and belief, Musk did not even
intend to have Twitter pay the director's office and officers
in dimnification and insurance premiums as required by section six
point six of the merger agreement. On information and belief,
(19:44):
a Twitter employee with access to Twitter's accounts and capacity
to execute the payment, made that payment despite musk specific
objections preventing a brief a breach of the merger agreement,
and this employee was fired for doing so. So. Basically,
Musk was required to pay like in dimnification and insurance
premiums as part of the merger agreement, which is like
that's something he's required to do under state law to
(20:06):
keep the company like functioning legally. And he directed an
employee to like cancel the payment because he's saying basically,
don't pay money for anything. And so this person follows
the law and makes the payment and Musk fires them. Wow,
very funny. Yeah, leadership, Yeah, no, no, yeah, so obviously,
(20:28):
I mean it is that yeah, yeah, what's episode?
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Oh just that broken brain thing of just like you're
so rich and powerful and you have this idea of
yourself and your view that you're like, just don't do it,
just don't do anything right, just like it doesn't matter,
Like the idea of like buying this company and just
like we're not going to spend any money and if
(20:55):
we do, you're fired.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
It's like the the idea that would work out for him.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Well, just when you're that rich and powerful, you get
away with lots of stuff.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Look at him not paying rent.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
I mean yeah, and you.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Think you can and I mean maybe he can, and
nothing will come of this.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
It's like, are you really? Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
It's interesting also seeing all this stuff because first we
saw it, as one might call it secondhand news.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Yeah, her back in.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
The day when you get like these little little tidbits,
these little snippets of like, yeah, this person said that
he did this, and just seeing it all laid out
in this legal complaint is interesting.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
It is interesting, and I think so a lot of
this is kind of going over the stuff that was
reported one way or the other, like as it was happening.
So if you don't remember, back on November third, twenty
twenty two, after the acquisition, he sent out an email
basically saying, Hey, we're going to have a meeting tomorrow
and you'll know who's getting shit canned. The next day,
November fourth, they fired half of the company. It seems
(21:59):
like the layoffs were largely organized by SpaceX and Tesla
employees who sort of like came in and help him
build lists. Yeah, yeah, he brought in That's what's alleged
here at leaset on information Belief. Musk. You used engineers
from his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX to help determine
which tweets would be included in the November fourth layoff and.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Then sorry, putting engineers in charge of that.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah, especially since so much of the jobs aren't engineering,
like for example being the people who pay to keep
mandated and shit.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Yeah no, it's just like this like weird like billionaire
engineer brain.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Imagine like people in HR or people that are trained
for these kinds of conversation is one thing, but engineers.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah, also like the people who are worse at I
don't know, managing, Like do.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
You think that they just got people in the room
and played go your own way?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, you should go your own way? Man? What a
b No, you nailed it. So yeah yeah yeah. So
you know, at this point, Twitter's been been gutted, you know,
much like a big game hunter who gets impaled by
a tusk.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
There we go, like TV Nicks in that breakup. But
I like you, well yeah that's.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
That all that works too. So the next thing that
happens is they start firing people after this like first
wave of layoffs. You know, those are they're agreeing to
pay severance and they're gonna fuck with a lot of
those people on severance. But in order to avoid paying severance,
the next thing that that Twitter does is they start
over the next few days firing even more people saying
(23:44):
they were in violation of Twitter policy. These are four
cause terminations, so like they don't have to do the
same things they have to do in like layoffs are
e severance. So it's I mean, it's it's it's fuckery.
It's also like bad for people's careers. It's one thing
if like yeah, that company, the the the boss gutted
(24:05):
it and everybody got laid off, but they didn't necessarily
do anything wrong that doesn't necessarily hurt your chances of
getting hired again, as opposed to like getting fired for
violating company policy, which can which is yeah yeah, or
for paying a mandated insurance yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You know who does follow the law.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Possibly products and services?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It has to be it is, it is we most
do they nearly all of them do. I mean we are.
We are sponsored by the Sina Loa cartel, who have
a little bit of a history of rule breaking, but
for the most part, all of our sponsors are law abiding.
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Or girl, m m.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Good stuff, good stuff. Oh, we're back, We're back, and
we're going to continue because, as our fans always say,
don't stop. Oh boy, yeah yeah, yeah, this is really
(25:22):
the episode of some of our fans as dreams. Oh boy,
we should.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
We can't break this too far.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, no, yeah, there out, So I accidentally started playing rumors.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
On my phone.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, I mean a lot of the allegations against Musk
are based on well, you know, the phrase they use
is based on information and belief. But what is that
if not rumors? Too much readful in it?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Like yeah it ugh, yes, we're having fun.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Good stuff. Good stuff. So the next thing that Musk
announces is that Twitter's ending its remote work policy and
all workers have to immediately report to a physical Twitter office.
This was a real problem for people who lived like
hundreds of miles from Twitter offices and could not do this.
Musk updated the policy after this was pointed out to
him and said that Twitter would allow for a transition
(26:22):
period for remote workers who live too far away to
move to a location closer to Twitter. That's a good
decision to like, uproot your entire life and move across
country for a job that appears to be collapsing.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
Every map does need you there, yeah, and probably won't
exist in like six ynths.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That seems like a good call. Later, the policy morphed
into one in which managers could allow their reports to
work remotely if they chose to, but would themselves be
fired if the employees they allowed to work from home
did not perform up to Musk's undefined and unarticulated standards.
What a great working environment.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Well, he's just a very articulate person.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
No, no, he's dumb and kind of an asshole.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Yeah, so the owner of a social media communication platform
is so bad at communicating, Well, he's not.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
He's he bought it, you know, like he purchased. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's pretty cool. So in mid November, Musk sends
another email with a link to an online form and
an ultimatum. Any Twitter employee who wanted to keep their
job at Twitter would need to affirmatively indicate their consent
by checking a box on an online form to a
more hardcore working environment, which would mean long hours at
(27:37):
high intensity and in a transparent attempt to avoid the
severance obligation to which he had bound himself, Musk unilaterally
decreed that employees who did not affirmatively check the box
would be deemed to have voluntarily resigned in exchanged for
two months of non working leave in a single month's
post separation pay. That's cool.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
What, Yeah, How you run a company? You show your
employees that you're gonna do a good job.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Well, it's really important.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Doesn't he want people to like have kids and raise
a family, but like he also want them to like
spend like twelve hours a day sleeping at the office.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah, I'm not sure that.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Does he want everybody to have kids and raise a
family also? Well, also types of people that have kids
and rais also have.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Fraternity and maternity leave for his employees as well.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
But he doesn't want his employees doing that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Other people have contradictions that one is, yeah, vaguely, other
people should be doing that.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So, as part of this wave of layoffs, a substantial
number of employees were laid off because they did not
immediately affirmatively agree to the material changes to their working
conditions that Musk had demanded, and yet that still wasn't enough.
After the November seventeenth layoff, Musk again turned to engineers
from his other companies to conduct code reviews of co
written code written by Twitter employees. The code reviews were
(28:54):
clear pretext to attempt additional four cause firings. The reviewers
lacked the context to meaningful evaluate the code, and the
reviews were completed in an amount of time. It was
clearly insufficient for any good faith approach of the task.
After the code reviews, Twitter fired multiple employees on the
pretext that their work was not up to standard. Many
of those employees had received uniformly positive performance reviews prior
(29:16):
to being fired. Other employees were put on performance improvement
plans in a transparent attempt to lay the groundwork for
future four cause firings. The slap dash bad faith nature
of these reviews was open and obvious. Some managers acknowledged
that they were instructed to stack rank their employees so
that at least some of the employees in each group
would be fired or placed on performance improvement plans, even
if all were performing adequately. Other managers specifically informed employees
(29:39):
that the managers had placed on pips that the employees
could keep doing what they were doing because their performance
did not require improvement. Other managers could not identify the
standard by which they had assessed particular performance as requiring improvement,
and at least some fired employees were informed that they
had been fired by mistake and asked to return to work.
All told on information and believe Twitter laid off, fired,
(30:00):
or engineered the resignations of over five thousand employees within
less than two months.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
That's beautiful stuff, real, real impressive leadership right there.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I was going to just say, firing all of this
stuff is very time consuming. All of the work that's
being put into fucking over the employees and firing them
and then whoopsies are the ones that arguably too much
(30:34):
attention when there's vital things that need to be done
at the company.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Anyway, Sorry, Cody, what were you going to say?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Oh, no, that's true.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
It's just there's He did that interview, an interview recently
where they talked about this, and basically he's like, yeah,
we're going to try to hire a bunch of people back,
and maybe people we fired will want to come back,
like very recently, Like this is the plan, and it's
just souse. He didn't even like I saw some Twitter
(31:03):
Blue subscribers be like, oh I love I love this because, like,
you know, being able to own your mistakes.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
No, no, no, he didn't say it was a mistake. He
said that he had to do it. This is all.
Speaker 5 (31:12):
This is all in the pretext that like I have
to get rid of this many people. I have to
And now that he did, he's like, well, we'll hire
them back. That's still not admitting the mistake. He's still
saying he had to do it. He's just saying he's
going to do this new thing now.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
And it's very funny that he thinks these people are
going to return to work, because I guarantee you they
are never going back again.
Speaker 5 (31:31):
Oh my god, Katie got Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Here, Oh man, it's just.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Nom. That's something no one has ever said to Elon.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Musk No, no, they know.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Oh fuck. So let's go to the story of one
of the people who's a party to this lawsuit, plaintiff Hawkins.
Hawkins was Twitter's vice president of real Estate and Workplace,
responsible for its office leases and managing its offices. So
you can tell this person's not going to be long
for the company because Elon's no longer dealing with any
of that. Yeah. Uh, debt debt DA DA talks about
(32:22):
her whole career, which I don't really care about, but yeah,
so she's not opposed. It says that she was not
opposed to the merger or the concept of Muscus, Twitter's
new CEO. She received word of the impending merger deal
while on family vacation, didn't know a lot about Musk
at the time. I don't think that's possible, but okay,
it just seems weird that you wouldn't know a lot
about Elon Musk and live in the Bay and the
(32:43):
tech industry.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
But yeah, maybe I guess it is like you cannot
know about him, but you can. He's the Tesla guy.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, he's the Tesla guy. That's probably what she means,
given the uncertainty her focus in the period leading up
to the merger. In the leadership she provided her team
since round one, basic principle, let's focus on doing our
jobs and protecting our people. During the pendency of the merger,
employee attention was a critical concern, as we've talked about Yaha, YadA,
yadda Musk okay at the closing of the As the
(33:12):
closing of the merger approached, Musk's behavior heightened Hawkins' concerns.
He showed up to an all hands meeting exactly once,
arriving late and spending his time talking about extraterrestrials. Oh,
that's so funny, is.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
That the I bet that's the one where he also
talked about gizmos and how he likes gizmos.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
That maybe I think that may come a little bit later,
but it's very clear he was talking about aliens this
whole time, and all of these twoops were just saying,
I don't want to know.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's so right, it's so he's such a work.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
It's just like one of those that he thinks he's
so interesting and like, oh everyone's so boring. I have
great conversations, but he's only got these stock things he has,
like a thing he says about aliens and other thing
he says about simulations, and that's it, Like that's his
idea of like, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Very much like a push button get Bacon attitude to comedy.
Speaker 5 (34:06):
Yeah, but like he thinks it's like this like deep,
like interesting conversation that goes beyond his one like talking
point about it.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
M M. But you know, yep, maybe stuff.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Maybe he's not. Maybe he's fascinating, so.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
He shows up once he bullshits about aliens. Even after
that meeting, Hawkins kept an open mind, hoping that Musk's
odd behavior would not impact his leadership when she took
over Twitter, and the employees were part of his team,
but Hawkins also formed a strong determination to remain at
Twitter at least throughout a new transition period in order
to shepherd her team through the transition. The reality of
Musk's new directives and operation of Twitter almost immediately shattered
(34:43):
that determination. Upon Musk's arrival at Twitter, he brought with
him a transition team of executives and sycophants from his
other companies, from whom Musk directed Twitter's employees to take direction.
This is the transition team. He also brought over Tesla
engineers too. Upon information and belief make retention and termination
to decisions. The transition team decreed that no managers were
allowed to communicate with their teams via Slack, which just
(35:07):
like just nukes the business, right, like, this is the
only way we communicate for most things, and you're like,
nobody gets to do this. They froze all payments to
vendors until they could be verified. No explanations were ever
given as to what this meant or why it was
being done. Yeah, it basically Twitter was just breaching contracts
(35:27):
and mass without like informing the vendors or the employees
communicating with these vendors as to why face with tens
or hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding invoices with
no reasonable expectation of timely payment. Many of these vendors
informed Twitter that they would not be performing further work
for Twitter until those invoices were paid, which is, by
the way, part of why DeSantis's announcement was a failure
(35:48):
is that Twitter hadn't paid a major vendor that was
responsible for like keeping Twitter spaces up and online space. Yeah,
very funny. But you know who does all their vendors
because their vendors are me, they pay you over and
do our ads. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's who I get paid. Yeah,
(36:11):
so help me get paid? H terrible?
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Did you get paid? Did you get paid? H?
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah? We're back and I'm I'm counting up my money.
I'm counting up my money, which is why everyone calls
me the gold dust woman. I don't know that one
was going to be hard to fit in that.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
That's good. That was really good, but I mean a.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Little too much.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
It is your show.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
You did? You did both? Miss one that I did
a little bit ago.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
What did you do?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (36:50):
I was.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I was pretty pretty proud about this, but yeah, I've
I've also forgotten which one I did. I missed one.
Listeners you can go search for it. It was. It
was like seven minutes ago. You know, nobody, nobody commented
on it. Pull up the pull up the set list
for rumors and figure out which one I did. That's
a little more. You'll get a prize, You'll get a price.
(37:13):
I'm not going to tell you what it is. And
like Elon Musk, I will probably not follow through with
this promise. But you know, lie funny, Yeah, I'm gonna
I'm telling you sweet little lies man, good stuff. So yeah,
Twitter fired these vendors when they were, like, you know,
(37:36):
had had issue with not getting paid. Musk attempted to
halt the payment of his employees contractually mandated November rs
US like these people were guaranteed by their contracts a
certain like number of vested like internal stock units that
he's just saying, attempting to not pay people. God, what
a piece of shit. Robert Cayden was fired shortly after
(37:58):
the November vest payments went through on information belief. Caden
was fired because of his actions and making the November
RSU payment and compliance with Twitter's obligations over Musk subjections.
Delana Brand, Twitter's chief people officer and Hawkins's direct manager,
handed in her notice within days after the merger closed,
because she was disgusted at how people were being treated honor.
About October thirtieth, twenty twenty two, Hawkins attended a meeting
(38:20):
with Steve Davis, Jared Birchall, and many of Twitter's global leaders.
In that meeting, Davis announced several changes that voted ill
for Hawkins's team in her role at Twitter. First, he
announced that Twitter's sourcing and procurement team should handle all
lease negotiations from that point forward, despite lacking both personnel
and experience sufficient to handle this task. Next, he announced
that the company would no longer be working with brokers
(38:40):
to procure negotiate leases. This choice ran in conflict with
every established standard and practice of commercial real estate management.
And obviously this is like a massive burden on the
in house staff, which has just been like cut viciously.
The only justification given for changes was Elon wants this
very Soon thereafter, Davis informed Hawkins that Twitter needed to
(39:00):
five find five hundred million dollars in annual savings. So
to do this, just a half a billion, Yeah, Sophie,
By the way, I'd like us to find half a
billion dollars in savings this year. For the company. Can
we can we get the team on that, you know, sure? Maybe, yeah,
get the engineers on that. Sure, yeah, yeah, I'm willing
(39:22):
to cut out coffee. Garrison's going to need to find
like three or four hundred million dollars and uh yeah, together,
I think that'll do it. My hundred million dollars in
coffee and another three or four hundred million dollars we
can make it.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Yeah, sure, I think that might be too much coffee anyway.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, I mean you're probably right for my heart. No,
I should just switch to cocaine again. That's that was
just like twenty or thirty million a year.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
So I was gonna say tea maybe maybe switch to te.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Wow, I don't know about that English.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't think Fleetwood Mac
did too much tea, but.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Yeah, yeah, rumors wasn't made on Earl Gray, that was
made on China white anyway. To accomplish this, each global
lead was given a massive spreadsheet that had to be
filled out every single day, identifying possible savings opportunities. Hawkins'
spreadsheet covered thirty locations in upwards of fifty leashes. The
(40:20):
pressure to fill in the spreadsheet on time was immense.
Expectations from above made it clear that compliance was prioritized
above accuracy. That's a good You know you're making a
good team when people are like, you don't actually need
to do your job as long as you're on time.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
That is wild.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
That's so funny. That's super funny.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
It's that that Marvel thing where like like five months
ago they were like, we're gonna stop focusing on quantity
and start focusing on quality.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
It's like, yeah, you gotta do it before.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
How would you describe what you were doing prior to this?
Speaker 4 (40:58):
Make sure it's good first.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah, oh god, yeah, it's it's it's pretty pretty good stuff.
For example, Twitter instructed Hawkins to identify leases for cancelation.
When she identified potential sites and leases that could be
terminated for cost savings, Hawkins and her team took the
time to document risk factors involved in downsizing or terminating
(41:20):
these leases. One of the big things is that like
if you break a lease, certainly you often have to
pay a fee, Like if you do that with your apartment,
you might have to pay like an extra month of rent.
If you do that for like a giant corporate lease
for thousands of workers. It could be significantly more.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Money, one would imagine.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, and it notes when the time came to present
their conclusions, this added context was not well received. When
informed of the risks of termination fees during a meeting
on November third, twenty twenty two, Steve Davis said, well,
we just won't pay those. We just won't pay landlords.
Davis also tour to Hawkins, we just won't pay rent.
Those are direct quotes from Davis per Hawkins's best recollection,
to the extent that they are not word for word
(41:59):
as they're extremely tight paraphrase. Ada Hawkins is shocked because
part of her job, like is reputation based, Like I
am the person managing leases for this company, and we
will make meet our obligations.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah time we paid, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah paid.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
In general we pay again.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
It's one of those things that in order for Elon
to meet his cost saving goals, this woman has to
like destroy her future in the business knowing that she
will immediately get shit canned as soon as possible. It's
just like such a gross guy and way of looking
at people and looking at business like it's hard to
he doesn't look Yeah, no, he is incapable of of
(42:43):
like seeing or caring about human beings.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Which tools or little pieces for him? Yeah, lack of
a plan.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
I guess players only love you when they're playing.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, that's that's what everyone says about Elon Musk.
Speaker 6 (43:00):
So I see it.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
It's okay, a lot of these are going to be
half assed guys, but you know, like we're just not
going to make it all them all work very well.
Unwilling to be involved in, let alone responsible for such thefts,
Hawkins resigned the next day. He is asking her to steal.
She did so despite her internal commitment to remain through
the transition to protect her team, because she had no
(43:23):
other choice. Yeah, I get that. That that kind of
scans like he is saying, I need you to commit
a series of crimes for me. Elon Musk a man
incapable of loyalty.
Speaker 5 (43:33):
So yeah, but that's the other thing, Like there's no
like there's just even if you're like on his good
side at one point.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
It's worth nothing.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
Yeah, it's worth nothing, and you're worth nothing to him.
And as soon as you even.
Speaker 5 (43:47):
Like not even like uh barely a challenge will turn
him around.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
And then you're going who becomes the scapegoat for things. Actually,
in this situation which it hit the fan, you know,
they're more likely to get wrapped up in that. Elon
Musk isn't clearly he invaded all of it. We've all
seen succession, I think, right, we've seen it.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Maybe Robert hasn't.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
No, yeah, it happens. Yeah, I don't know what, Like,
I get why she did what she did. So Killian
is the next person we talked about. Joseph Killian. He
was Twitter's global head of construction and Design. He was
immediately given Hawkins's duties after she quits. He worked directly
(44:32):
with the transition team and was directed by Steve Davis
and Liz Jenkins, who worked for the Boring Company, and
Pablo Mendoza, a venture capitalist who invested with Musk. Yeah,
so that's that's that's cool. Oh god, oh god. Yeah.
I mean it's a big scam, but they still are
a company. They dug that stupid hole in Las Vegas.
(44:52):
I went through. That was like, you dumb as fuck.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
They're not a company anymore.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I mean they have engaged in what are effectively a
series of like roping in local governments to agree to
work with him, and then actually.
Speaker 5 (45:04):
Like ye and pulling it out and then like canceling
other uh yeah, more viable transportation plans.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah, just to fuck with like public transportation. So I
just noted like this guy Killian gets given Hawkins his
job and he's being managed by Steve Davis and Liz
Jenkins who work for the boring company, and then there's
this bit which is amazing. Killian was also directed in
these activities by Nicole Hollander. On information and Belief, Hollander
(45:30):
was not employed by any of Musk's companies. On information
and belief, Hollander is Steve Davis's girlfriend than the mother
of his child. So Musk's Musks like Transition team are
just like hiring their girlfriends to manage the people in
committing real estate fraud.
Speaker 5 (45:47):
It's amazing where it's like, yeah, if you like, say,
my god.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
On information believe, Hollander was living at Twitter headquarters with
Davis and their infant child, who was a older what
the fuck?
Speaker 4 (46:04):
Yeah, family values awesome.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Despite not being employed by any of Musk's companies, Hollander
nonetheless had full instructional authority over Killian and the rest
of his team with regards to the Transition Almost immediately,
Musk's zero cost basis policy reared its head. Killian was
informed by the transition team that he would have to
justify his spin to Musk personally, and that if Musk
was not convinced that the expenses were necessary, he would
simply default on his contractual obligations and let the expenses
(46:30):
go unpaid. In early November, Davis sent a three am
email to fifteen or twenty managers complaining about Twitter's rent obligations,
which totaled one hundred and thirty million annually. And this email,
Davis specifically compared Twitter's rent obligations to Spacexes, noting that
Twitter had one tenth as many employees as SpaceX but
paid five times as much rent annually. Of course, Twitter
had significantly more employees when it first incurred its rent obligations.
(46:54):
Killian quickly became concerned that Musk intended to stop paying
rent on Twitter's outstanding leases, breaching the com tracks and
placing the company at risk of being evicted. Indeed, Musk's attorney,
Alex Spiro gladly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter
landlord Twitter's landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent since
San Francisco was a shithole. Oh my god, is.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
That the only thing you need to not pay rent?
Speaker 6 (47:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (47:18):
This this city with a fraction of the violent crime,
for example, many parts of Texas.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, it's I was just gonna say, because if that's
the case, I think we could apply it to a
lot of places.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Yeah, I yeah, I'm so. I'm so frustrated by this
man and all of the people around him. Yeah, he
incredibly hateable, old man or a piece of shit whatever.
Musk even went so far as to prevent Twitter from
paying the janitorial staff for the work they had already
(47:50):
provided after the janitors complained about being fired. In essence,
it quickly became clear to Killian that Musk's intended method
of operation was to obtain services from vendors without any
intention of keeping the agreements or paying for services requested
and received. In other words, robbing people like stealing from them, theft,
the thing that he's complained about happening on the streets
(48:11):
of San Francisco.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
Yeah, well, it's okay if you wear a suit and
do it.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yeah, it's great if you wear a suit and do it.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Absolutely again, it's what kind of Yeah, I'm agreeing with you.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
It's yeah, the I really like it.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
I know I'm not wrong.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
I feel like I feel like, if we're going to
have these really fucked up standard ground laws, you know,
where people can basically like commit murder if they feel
like their car is going to get stolen or something,
I feel like you should have the right to do that.
If you're like a janitor working for Elon Musk, like
you should you should be allowed to draw on him. Yeah, yeah,
(48:53):
I think that this is a self defense situation law. Yeah, yeah,
I I whatever, I don't know, this is this is
so disheartening.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
Yeah, it's really it's like really really disgusting.
Speaker 5 (49:05):
Yeah, and just uh, I guess I've seen some of
the uh fail get lifted and sort of like people's
like rose colored glasses on about him be taken off
a bit. But it's just obvious the kind of person
he is, and like how he doesn't really care about
a lot of the stuff he says.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
He cares about. It's just I don't know, it sucks.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
Hate it, Yeah, it sucks. He just cares about being. Yeah,
he's he's, he's he sees himself primarily as an entertainer
because for some reason, like all of the worst people
in America, his primary goal is to like be famous
for making people like laugh or whatever. Like it's weird
(49:47):
because like, stand up comedians are the most miserable people
in the world, and also all of the worst richest
people desperately wish they were a stand up comedian. Like
you saw it when fucking what's his name? Uh yeah,
Dave Chappelle brought him out that like, oh, if you
could only yeah, if you could only have an audience
(50:07):
eating out of the palm of your hand, you would
be happier than you've ever been in your life.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
But like, it's the one thing you can't buy.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
And we've talked about that on various shows that we've
been on or have.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
But you know, obviously this was not a cool kid.
He was.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
He's not a well liked person. The only cachet that
he's ever had is his money. He's not even a
smart innovative person. Every idea he's had is someone else's idea.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
That he's tanking. I mean, are any of his businesses
doing well?
Speaker 5 (50:42):
Yeah, you've seen a lot also with like the Ai
quote unquote boom, where it's so clear some of this
is just like, oh, you just wish you were a
little more creative.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Like, yeah, why they hate writers.
Speaker 5 (50:55):
You hate exactly, you hate musicians, you hate creators because
you don't you can't do it well or you're not
praised enough for it or whatever, and so you have
to have the machine do it.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
I think what we actually need to solve most of
our problems a basic income that ensures that like people
could just like paint or make music or do comedy,
uh and survive. And and here's the key part. Then
we use AI to give the people who are worst
at at a fan base so they feel like they're
successful and they don't become yeah yeah, yeah fans. Yeah
(51:40):
they'll they'll never meet them, they do the yeah exactly,
and then we can we don't have a.
Speaker 5 (51:47):
Daily Lives doesn't exist account where they make like oh,
this is a fake person is made with a bunch
of people an audience of them following and clapping and
clicking the like button praising is bad pilot.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Now now I'm envisioning, like I know they're saying that.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
What Now I'm envisioning like a Black Mirror episode where
some journalist is like confused at how there's so many
Ben Shapiro fans of his TV writing, or like how
Elon Musk is such a successful stand up comedian and
he like he cracks the case and then like the
FBI has to come destroy him because you have like
you don't know what we're keeping it like we have
(52:28):
to let them think they're good.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Good, But I mean this scenario, look, was it a
couple of days ago?
Speaker 3 (52:37):
The godfather of AI comes out saying this could be.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Our lead the world and our annilation. No, I'm like,
maybe this is our great positive reframe.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, but you know what's even better than AI providing
a fan base for all of the your too right
wing culture warriors who got into advocating genocide because nobody
laughed at their jokes.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
I don't want to know.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
Yeah, oh well it's you. Oh, it's both of you.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Which is our time to plug stuff?
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (53:17):
I thought it was a time to do one one
less Fleetwood mac reference.
Speaker 1 (53:21):
Oh I mean we.
Speaker 4 (53:22):
Could we still can? I did?
Speaker 2 (53:27):
This has been a total has been one of my dreams.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Now, that was bad.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
That was that was that was good. That was good.
I'm proud of.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Being here to stay with you guys.
Speaker 2 (53:37):
Oh, we have a show called some More News that
Cody hosts on the YouTube channel and a podcast that
Cody's going to tell you about now.
Speaker 5 (53:48):
It's called some More News. Yeah, you can watch it
on YouTube dot com. Slash the name of the show,
probably and even more News is the name of the
podcast version, which is more of a different kind of show.
But it's the same people where podcasts are available.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah. Yeah, so check them both out.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Check it out.
Speaker 5 (54:10):
Google the names of our names and you'll find all
the stuff that we do.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Google Google Katie Stole, Google Google Cody Johnston, or google
them by their nicknames see Money and k Money, which
is exclusively how I refer to them in private.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
It's true.
Speaker 4 (54:27):
Time.
Speaker 5 (54:28):
I don't really respond because I always forget, but yeah,
that's how I type it out when I'm saying I
just call you both, come money.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
But they seem to know, Oh, I definitely that works,
Come Money, Come honey.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
I just have one last thing to say to you both,
and it's that you make love and fun.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
Ah, there we go, There we go. Yeah, come back
for the next part of this series, when we'll be
talking about another album. I don't know which other album.
I don't know. How do you guys feel about the
dire straits? I only know one song that they wrote.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
I only know a couple songs limited.
Speaker 4 (55:11):
I only know money for nothing, limited references available.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
Well, well we'll work again. We just do rumors again.
Speaker 6 (55:21):
There was the album and you know what's not an
album but doesn't have ads? Our cooler Zone Media Apple
premium subscription channel you can subscribe to.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Now Robert say something. Yeah, I am not secondhand news,
but you know what's first hand news is if you
get a subscription to cooler Zone Media on Apple's whatever
their thing, then you don't get ads, and then the
news isn't secondhand. It's just coming straight to you unfiltered.
(55:59):
You know. H. Every time I accidentally say something offensive,
we leave it in for you guys. That's right. It's
a lot of piss. Yeah, that's that's my.
Speaker 3 (56:17):
New piss out of a podcast.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
U when we say it the way we do. Yeah, yeah,
it's really not bones Yeah, uh definitely not. Okay, anyway,
that's been an episode.
Speaker 6 (56:34):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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