Twitter Deal Moves Ahead, Tesla Stock Tanks, Zooming’ With Putin

Monday: Tesla shares crater 9% after Musk’s electric vehicle giant fell short on quarterly car deliveries, while Musk makes waves over his Twitter poll proposal for peace in Ukraine, withterms more friendly to Russia than Ukraine or the White House backs, including ceding part of the country’s internationally recognized territory (Musk explains he’s a “big fan of Ukraine, but not of WW3”).

Tuesday: Twitter discloses Musk told the company he would move forward with the original purchase terms the parties agreed to in April valuing Twitter at $44 billion, sending Twitter’s stock up 22% and bringing the messy saga between Musk and Twitter to an apparent end two weeks before a trial to force the deal through was set to begin.

Wednesday: Musk and Twitter’s fairytale ending lasts barely a day before reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times indicate the sides remain at odds over certain details, and that Musk lobbied for as steep as a 30% discount.

Thursday: Musk reveals in a tweet he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on a video call in 2021, while the judge presiding over Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk pushes back the trial scheduled for October 17, setting an early November trial date if the parties don’t close the deal by October 28.

Friday: Tesla shares sink another 6% to $224.45, declining 12% on the week and hitting a four-month low, while Musk hits back on a Financial Times report that the Starlink internet terminals provided to the Ukrainian army by Musk’s SpaceX were experiencing outages on the battlefield, with Musk tweeting it was “bad reporting” and that anything on the frontlines is “classified.”