Kevin O'Leary TRASHES Twitter but says he would join Musk's bid due to Tesla's track record
Entrepreneur and 'Shark Tank' host Kevin O'Leary has criticized Twitter and the platform's leadership as the company's performance has been seeing a downward trend lately. In a recent interview with CNBC, O'Leary said that the social media site has stooped to levels as low as the bottom of Dante's hell.
However, O'Leary admitted that he would join Elon Musk, the majority shareholder of Twitter, in purchasing the platform as Musk's company Tesla has an impeccable record.
READ MORE
'Shark Tank': Kevin O'Leary teased for being 'supportive' after $150K deal with Behave Bras
What is Elon Musk's Plan B? From DESTRUCTION to NEW PLATFORM, here are the weirdest theories
O'Leary slaughtered the social media platform on CNBC's 'Squawk Box', declaring it has "totally lagged all its other competitors" and is the "most miserable investment you could have put your dollars into in social media." He added, "Never grew anywhere near as fast as Google or Facebook or Instagram or even TikTok."
He continued, "You have to ask yourself, the rotating suite of executives have come through this thing, and all the stock options issued over the last nine years have created virtually no value for the shareholder. Why not get the whacking stick out and just start all over again. And that's what Elon Musk is proposing."
He went on to say, "The biggest risk for shareholders here – whether you believe in the free speech issue or not – is if Musk goes away, then they're back in the same miserable place they are now. You know, there's Dante's hell, at the very bottom of that is Twitter."
O'Leary also claimed the company has had a terrible track record in growth and needs to change in order to survive. "It needs the whacking stick. It needs everybody cleaned out of there," he said. "You've got to ask yourself, it's horrific what this company has done to their shareholders – I weep like a baby for them."
The TV presenter emphasized that he "would not touch" Twitter's stock without Musk. Praising what Elon has done with his company Tesla, he said he would only become a shareholder of Twitter due to Elon's "executional performance on everything he touches." "The rest of this board and those employees have done a horrifically bad job," O'Leary asserted. "I think they should be fired."
O'Leary also addressed concerns that the platform has been muzzling free speech. "If you ask me about free speech and who should be canceled and who's not, the reason this thing is underperformed is they've tried to do this curation by canceling voices and losing millions of followers. This is an abysmal performance," he said.
When co-anchor Andrew Sorkin questioned what Twitter would look like without any moderation or boundaries, O'Leary said, "Andrew, all of that already exists on the internet in an uncurated way and people seem to be surviving, all of that exists. Now, you know, when you start to try and figure out who should have a voice and who shouldn't, you're stepping on the basic principles of free speech in America. And that really doesn't sit well with the majority of the people who believe in free speech."
Elaborating on his support for free speech on the internet, he added, "The cost of free speech, the cost to society, is allowing the lunatic fringe to have a voice, and that's always been the case – back to when they were writing newspapers by hand."