Business Insider Claims Musk is in Bed With SBF, Musk Blows Them Out of the Water

The far left business focused site “Business Insider” just made the crazy claim that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was in part financed by disgraced crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried:

“Elon Musk is denying that embattled FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried or FTX own shares of Twitter since the Tesla CEO took the company private, rejecting a recent report from Semafor.

On Tuesday, Semafor reported that the Tesla CEO had texted Bankman-Fried on May 5, inviting him to roll over his public Twitter shares into a stake in Musk’s privately-held company, a few weeks after Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion.

“As I said, neither I nor Twitter have taken any investment from SBF/FTX,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday in response to Semafor and its editor-in-chief Ben Smith. “Your article is a lie.”

“He may have owned shares in Twitter as a public company, but he certainly does not own shares in Twitter as a private company,” Musk said in a separate tweet.

Semafor reported that Musk’s text in May followed a message from Bankman-Fried in which he expressed his support for Musk’s plans for Twitter and said he wouldn’t be able to invest new money in Twitter. According to the report, the crypto founder added he had about $100 million in stock he could roll over into the deal.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that an FTX balance sheet dated November 10 listed Twitter shares as an “illiquid” asset.

Spokespeople for Twitter and FTX did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication.

Musk initially responded to Insider’s story on Semafor’s report in a tweet, calling it “False.” One person familiar with the deal also told Insider that it was “totally false” to say SBF had a stake in Twitter.

Musk also has pointed out that Bankman-Fried was an investor in Semafor, the media outlet that reported that Bankman-Fried had a stake in Twitter.

The site’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, acknowledged the investment. “Like you and many others, we took an investment from him,” Smith said in a response to Musk on Twitter. “We have covered him aggressively, and disclose it every time we write about him, including here.”

Musk of course took offense to Business Insider’s report and tweeted:

False. Also, Business is still not a real publication. Just give up.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

Frankly in this particular dispute we take Musk’s side. Business Insider is a partisan organization masquerading as a new organization and is on par with the Babylon Bee when it comes to credibility.

That said the Babylon Bee gets it right far more often than Business Insider.

One way you know for certain that Musk is doing the right things at the helm of Twitter is the reaction from lefty media types:

Talk about creating hysteria for no reason! Jeez…

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