Tesla CEO Elon Musk doesn’t care if his tweets cost him money

Speaking with CNBC’s David Faber shortly after Tesla’s annual general meeting, the Twitter owner was asked whether his notorious tweets “hurt the company”.

“Are there Tesla owners who say, ‘I don’t agree with his political position … and I know it, because he shares so much of it? Or are there advertisers on Twitter … who will come and say, ‘you’ve got to stop man, or, you know, I can’t get these ads because of some of the things you tweet’?” Mr Faber asked.

Musk then awkwardly paused for at least 10 seconds, before slowly replying: “You know, I’m reminded of, ah, the scene in The Princess Bride – great movie – where he confronts the person who killed his father, and he says, ‘offer me money, offer me power, I don’t care’.”

“So you just don’t care?” Mr Faber said in response. “You want to share what you have to say?”

“I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” Musk replied forcefully.

Over the years, Musk has emerged as a Twitter addict, using the social media platform to share memes, promote crypto and his string of companies and in recent times, share his thoughts on politics and global events.

But many of his tweets have proved to be controversial, with some, such as his 2022 announcement that he was now a Republican voter, or his thoughts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, causing Tesla’s share price to drop.

A short clip of the new interview was shared on Twitter on Wednesday, where it received thousands of likes, retweets and comments and was variously described as “scary”, “intense” and “awkward”.

“I’m sure investors love hearing this,” one person posted.

“Never seen Elon this scary,” another said, with another adding: “Elon looking very intense.”

“Most awkward pause then through pressed lips comes quite a quote. This will make a splash of sorts,” yet another wrote.

His comments came after a tumultuous few months since snapping up Twitter last October for a cool $US44 billion.

Since then, advertising revenue has dropped dramatically and the majority of the workforce have either been let go or have resigned.

Twitter has also never strayed far from the headlines, including regarding plans to make verification subscription-only, even for legacy accounts that had long been verified.

Musk’s new interview came hot on the heels of Tesla’s annual general meeting, and also covered a range of other topics including the state of the US economy and interest rates.

He argued that the Federal Reserve had been too slow in raising interest rates, and predicted it would also be slow to drop them in the months ahead.

“You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a brake pedal on the economy, frankly,” Musk said.

“It makes a lot of things more expensive. So if the car payment or your home mortgage is absorbing more of your monthly budget, then you have less money to buy other things.”

Musk also shared his predictions for the year ahead during the Tesla meeting, claiming the economy would suffer for the next 12 months with many companies collapsing as a result, but that Tesla would ride out the storm.

He claimed the Model Y would be the “No. 1 selling car on earth this year”, and that Tesla might reverse its policy against traditional advertising.

“We’ll try out a little advertising and see how it goes,” he said.