Joe Rogan Hails Elon Musk As ‘Movie Star Superhero’ After Twitter Takeover
“[Musk] believes that free speech is important—not just important, vital—for a functioning democracy. And I agree with that.”
Joe Rogan is totally pumped about Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter buyout–and he’s not afraid to congratulate the world’s richest man on his latest acquisition.
Rogan praised the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as a “superhero”-style free speech advocate after hearing about Musk’s Twitter takeover during an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with guest Jessica Kirson.
“Oh shit, oh shit, Elon Musk just bought Twitter,” Rogan exclaimed. “We got a movie star cut type of a superhero. Like a movie and there was a guy who was like a hero in the movie who happens to be a billionaire who does wild shit.”
He added, “Like makes his own rockets and drills under the city with electric cars and then buys Twitter.”
Rogan, who has hosted Musk on his podcast three times, clearly approves of Musk’s purchase of the social media company.
“Here’s why that’s going to be interesting,” Rogan continued. “[Musk] believes that free speech is important—not just important, vital—for a functioning democracy. And I agree with that.”
Rogan also commented on Twitter’s alleged practices of banning and “shadowbanning”, or hiding certain users’ content from others, instead of outright banning users.
“They make it so your content has less impact, it has less engagement. They limit your ability to express yourself. They ban accounts if the account says something they don’t agree with. This ability to shadowban people has to be exposed.”
Before the buyout, Musk became Twitter’s largest single shareholder with a 9.1 percent stake, but then rejected a seat on Twitter’s board of directors before coming back with an offer to purchase the entire company.
Twitter’s board of directors then agreed to sell the platform to Musk for $54.20 per share. The offer represents a 38 percent premium over Twitter’s April 1 market close at $39.31, which was the last trading day before Musk’s 9.1 percent shareholding was made public.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement announcing the deal. Musk said he wanted “to make Twitter better than ever.”
In a recent tweet, Musk also clarified what “free speech” means to him.
“By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”