Twitter brings Elon Musk’s genius reputation crashing down to earth

Musk’s intense focus on his social media company purchase has devolved into the culture wars. Meanwhile, Tesla is tanking.

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December 24, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST
Elon Musk has built his reputation on having a Midas touch with the companies he runs — something many investors and experts thought he would bring to Twitter. (Emily Wright, The Washington Post illustration)
13 min

Elon Musk was speechless.

The Twitter CEO was on a live audio chat Tuesday night with software engineers when one user started quizzing him about the internal workings of the company’s systems. Musk, who hours earlier said he would keep control of Twitter’s software systems even though he plans to relinquish the CEO role, said the company’s code needed a complete rewrite. One of the participants asked what he meant — pushing for him to explain it from top to bottom.