Watch The 11th Hour Highlights: Oct. 27

good evening once again I'm Stephanie rule we're going to get to the political news in a few minutes but we want to begin this evening's broadcast with breaking news Elon Musk now officially in charge of Twitter the Takeover is complete with us tonight to discuss Elizabeth dewaskin the Silicon Valley correspondent for the Washington Post she broke the story tonight and Cara Swisher expert on all things Elon Musk and an editor at large of New York Magazine co-host of the pivot podcast and on with Kara Swisher my friend Cara it's official musk is in top executives are out and the far right is rejoicing what are we in for yes well there you are that kind of says it all um you know I think it's going to be really difficult it's so he's bought it for three times what it was worth is worth um he can turn it around he's got a he's got a big it's the Mount Everest of turnarounds for sure um and he certainly has got to bring in some people who are decent at figuring out a business plan for this company he may not care but he still doesn't have unlimited funds and so there's there's a lot of debt on the books there's a lot of uh things they have to pay off Etc um and as rich as he is it's a it's an upward climb first even Elon Musk Elizabeth you're the one who broke this what else do we need to know and is Trump returning soon well we uh we're we're all preparing for that moment and certainly the right is rejoicing I think uh one thing you know last week we reported that musk was planning on potentially cutting up to 75 of Twitter staff I think what what Kara said is right he's got to figure out you know this company has always had outsized influence on politicians on journalists but it never made the revenues or the profits of Rivals like Facebook and YouTube so he's he's presented a lot of Rosy pictures to investors he's floated a lot of plans he says he wants advertising but it doesn't really add up so if he actually is going to make the company functionable functional and profitable it's a huge uphill climb and especially if he plans to fire so many people which tonight's you know Massacre you know Thursday night Massacre kind of shows that's the direction he's going in cleaning house Cara he already had the Twitter megaphone he didn't need to buy it he knows he's paying way above Market this is happening while Facebook stock is tanking and we know he tried to back out so does he really want this thing well he had to buy it he did a contract I mean everyone was like oh I can get out of it you can't get out of a contract like he had with that so he had to buy it so he's trying to make the best of it presumably the problem is he's facing a really tough headwinds really good companies that make profits and by the way Elizabeth Twitter doesn't make profits that's one of the problems with it it's been really struggling its entire time and its stock has had almost no purchase since it was founded since it went public at least um and so you know he has this incredible headwinds going on we're very good companies are suffering meta is a profit machine and it's and it's still suffering um you know Apple I think reports reports reported no reported today or what in any case they're all facing headwinds and so you saw Google alphabet having problems so Twitter you know they sneezed Twitter's going to get pneumonia in the advertising business and that's most of their business so we'll see what he's going to do and again he may have some time with these investors not clear who the investors are because now it's going to be a private company and we'll have no insight into what's happening so he could say it's doing well and what would we know none of us would know but isn't the problem Cara that we also don't know exactly who those investors are so for the price they paid he could be doing their bidding on this giant superpower of a platform well I don't know what would their bidding be I mean it depends on who they complex yeah it seems like I mean it's not I think they want influence I think he bought this for influence and it's not a bad thing for his other companies to say I'm the head of Twitter the chief wit is what he calls himself so in that way it does have it's good for his other businesses in a weird way um but you know I don't know what their bidding would be but it is interesting that this company is you know all these companies are owned by billionaires essentially and then you have the one that's cleaning everybody's clock which is Tick Tock um no matter who you are that's who's gaining all the advertising money and that of course has implications around Chinese the Chinese government interfering with it so it's a really unusual and weird scene in the social media space Elizabeth running this company we just went through the headwinds what he has to do it's a full-time job but he's not leaving his other jobs running Tesla running SpaceX he just blew out the entire management team and since he got into this months ago we've been seeing scores of employees from Twitter quit on their own does he have enough time to even do this I I mean I really don't know how he's going to manage all of his many responsibilities and also he's a very erratic person I mean look what he did yesterday he showed up at Twitter's offices with a sink saying you know it was a stunt he's a he's a man of memes let my ownership sink in he tried to go on a charm offensive and make nice with everybody the next day he fires lots of people so you also have his erratic personality um I will also say that there are questionable investors in the deal I mean they're they're Saudi money in the deal there's Qatari money in the deal we know a lot about the investors Larry Ellison you know was a well well-known Trump supporter and co-founder of Oracle so we have a lot of people who were who have strong beliefs about free speech and politics and I think also one of the biggest questions that we didn't address is just if he does loosen up the standards of the platform by allowing Trump back on by kind of expanding um the the speech of the right does this become a toxic Place full of misinformation that then makes the platform not usable to the broader public that wants it for public debate so there's going to be this really fine line that he's going to have to walk between people wanting to be on the platform and people who are clearly very far on the right that are just rejoicing um and and are ready you know ready to jump on the platform and gain gain new audiences gain new followers and put out lots of content that Twitter in the past was policing or at least trying to police okay but then Cara that makes me turn to Congress for years as Twitter has becoming more and more powerful almost like a utility in our lives people have been begging for smart regulation from Congress so right now as we brace ourselves for what's to come shouldn't we be turning to them and say hey guys what have you been up to they can't they put us in this position they can't do anything it's they can't do anything it's a private well no we have a First Amendment and so they can't do anything if you're talking about that they could do a privacy Bill and that but Twitter's not really known for that other companies have more issues around privacy but there's almost nothing that Congress can do with this moment for this except make them liable move around 2 30 a little bit and so if there's some really you know if an Alex Jones type personality is allowed to run free on the platform they can be sued for defamation but but Cara they've had years they've had years to put smart regulation around social media platforms and have done nothing and that's how we ended up here right but there is none there is no smart legislation to make it's privacy legislation it's antitrust legislation it's it's other legislation but there's no way there's going to be any speech regulation from this Congress or any Congress to come um it's a it's a it's sort of the third rail of politics in that regard um and so I don't see that being the issue I think the issue is is how they treat the data of of consumers is really where you're and again will that have an effect this guy wants to buy this thing it's not a public utility it's a private platform um you may not like them a lot of people don't and he can be as as uh you know he can be Elon um I think you're just going to decide as a product and I think that's the problem if it becomes a free-for-all and assess pool you're just going to leave I'd leave I love Twitter but if it starts to become really unpleasant I'll leave just and I'll go somewhere else just like I do with lots and lots of things over the years with different technology things Elizabeth carra thank you for starting us off on this breaking news tonight I appreciate it you're going to elect me it's your system [Music] we're going to make sure that you have a fair and transparent election system because if we do we are a red State I guarantee you Republican right there Jim Marchant has a habit of denying the results of the 2020 election called lying about it and he is just one of the many reality denying candidates that are collecting big big money from Big Business and their leaders to reporters who have been on top of all of this really important stuff join us now CNBC political Finance reporter Brian Schwartz and Judd legum founder and author of the political newsletter popular information all right Gentlemen let's get dark Brian to you first tell us about your reporting this is really important stuff yeah it is I mean right now what you're seeing is dozens of corporate leaders across the country getting behind election and Iris are the very least people who dispute you know the results of the 2020 election and you're seeing it at the state level as you mentioned there it's the Secretary of State candidate and really at the federal level as well over millions of dollars being put into this election and again it's not just the leaders of these of these companies but also Corporate America the good companies themselves in some cases didn't many of these companies put out statements after January 6 we are not going to give any money to any lawmakers that did not vote to certify the election I mean what happened to that they just put them in a Timeout well you know at the time when that when those statements were being made my first thought was that that's a lot of PR spin that was my guess at the time and it appears that's exactly what it was and at the very least it was not a long-term commitment I hate to put it like that but I think that's fair to say right now if you look at the numbers The Judds looked at the numbers I've been looking at for quite some time there has been some let's put it lightly inconsistencies there particularly from corporate Pacs the Amazons of the world and you name it who have been giving to groups that have helped you know election to dying candidates um for for some time and it's again including at the federal level so this is what's been going on at least since January 6 and again these companies said they were going to pull back maybe they did but at some point they resumed and here we are today with where the midterms are the Amazon Super PAC last I checked Jeff Bezos cares all about the environment and I'm pretty sure election deniers don't care about climate or the environment John tell us what you've learned and actually name some names sure I'd be happy to you know this is something that really been tracking on a monthly basis since January 2021 when all these companies made the statements and there have been some companies that have kept their pledges Airbnb Marriott several dozen companies but a larger group of companies have over the course of the last two years really rolled back these pledges the last one uh that was particularly significant uh was Amazon uh which last month uh Gave Over seventeen thousand dollars to nine candidates uh who voted to overturn the election the amount of money is not significant for a company like Amazon but what I do think is important is these are people that Amazon said in their own statement in January 2021 uh were engaged in an unacceptable effort to undermine the Democratic process nothing has changed since then as far as the views of the people they donated to they haven't recanted that vote they haven't expressed any um regret about what they've done but before election day Amazon's reversed their stance and they're now donating money and we've seen lots of different companies a t uh is a is another example who initially pledged to cut off funds and have now given to many many candidates Toyota's another one we could we could spend your whole program Stephanie about listening updates that I'm trying to give people a flavor of what's been going on nine billion dollars that's how much money has been spent in these midterm elections right that is more than the annual Chicago school budget for the year given how much lawmakers on both sides of the aisle need to raise in order to win these elections is there any reason we should believe there's going to be any campaign Finance regulation changes election funding they want these big dollars yeah you're right that's on both sides of the aisle and and there is very unlikely in the next Congress as we get into the next next hours that we're going to see any really changes on campaign Finance reform there have been attempts at this over the years and there really has not been any real big movement there I do want to take a one step back it's something that we've talking about here you look at what happened after the election there's one major example that comes to my mind of a billionaire donor named Steve schwarzman CEO of Blackstone after the election one of the first people to be next to Donald Trump on the Saudi Arabia trip they they started an infrastructure fund with Saudi Arabian money right after that yes so he he came out after the election said listen it's over Joe Biden is President Donald Trump is not and Steve schwarzen as you just alluded to was very close to Donald Trump fast forward till now he is now giving millions of dollars to Super Pacs and some of those super Pacs are supporting uh people who have disputed the election results including Adam waxhol who's running right now for Senate in Nevada so that's where have you called Blackstone well I've tried to reach Blackstone before to speak to Ms schwarzen about this larger topic and I don't think we've really gotten a full response but that's the other key to this as well when you look at the billionaire donors and really speak to people in and around their world one of the things they just do not talk about at the top of their list of why either supporting these groups is what happened with in the 2020 election and these people's reactions to it it's not even at the top of the list really so it's very fascinating to see the lack of discussion about this from the donor class the big donor class and what they're focusing on now which is the usual you know cutting taxes and things like that but it's not really a focal point when they're giving big money here maybe it should be but it is not talked about at a really high level Judd what are they getting from these lawmakers is is the bet I'm just going to get easier regulation and more tax cuts I mean those are really positive if you run a company but if you don't have a functioning democracy if we're living in an uh in in an autocracy suddenly all the rules fly out the window and last I checked Steve schwartzman's the best example the reason Blackstone he told me this himself the reason Blackstone doesn't do business in Russia is because he can't trust the rule of law but they're willing to back candidates that want to put the rule of law out the window why would that be Judd well I mean that's exactly what Corporate America was saying uh less than two years ago they were saying that this represents such a fundamental threat and the transition of power the peaceful transfer of power is so fundamental that they took this extraordinary step and said we're not going to give to lawmakers who took this vote on January 6 and really that's a principle that should apply up and down the ballot and to these important state positions and not only do you have the corporations returning and donating to these congressional candidates but you also have especially in the governor's races candidates that are extraordinarily vocal in their belief the the false belief or the false contention that Trump won the 2020 election Kerry Lake in Arizona uh really centered her entire campaign around promoting this lie and then now she's being supported with 11 million dollars plus from the Republican Governors Association and that is an organization that doesn't just take Small Checks of a thousand dollars or a couple of thousand dollars but you have six figure donations from companies like Google United Healthcare Chevron many others writing these large checks and it's going straight to campaigns like Kerry Lake and she may very well be the next governor of Arizona it's a close race there but certainly the 11 million dollars from the Republican Governors Association much of which was funded by Corporate America has has not heard her chances there foreign [Music]

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 49,147

Keywords: msnbc, MSNBC, Specials

Id: wQfLxjNqm_c

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 28 2022