00:00Elon Musk might be the richest man in the world. However, apparently his takeover of X, formerly
00:05Twitter, has been anything but easy for the billionaire. And now Ben Meserich, author of
00:09the book Breaking Twitter, which chronicles Musk's bungled acquisition of the social media giant,
00:14recounts just how touch and go it was. During an interview with CNBC's Squawk Box,
00:19he told interviewers, quote, he got to a point where he locked himself in his office,
00:23was so upset that the Twitter employees were considering calling a wellness check
00:27by the San Francisco police because they thought he was going to self-harm himself.
00:31He adds that this was likely because Musk's reputation was on the line with regards to
00:35the purchase of Twitter, now X. And as users fled the platform and its appraisal sank,
00:40with X now valued at half of what Musk purchased it for, that severely affected the billionaire's
00:45emotional state. But the numbers weren't the only thing that led to X staff worrying
00:49about their company's owner, with the author saying that getting booed at a Dave Chappelle
00:53show and other publicly humiliating moments contributed to the situation, with Meserich
00:58saying during the interview, the Elon before Twitter and the Elon after Twitter are two
01:02different Elons. Elon didn't just break Twitter, Twitter broke Elon Musk. It was reported earlier
01:08this year that Musk cares very much about his reputation on the platform, even firing
01:12one of the site's engineers after they suggested that his popularity was waning.
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