Musk Dismisses Claim He Wants to Buy One America News

Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition in Washington on March 9, 2020. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has dismissed a claim from the CEO of One America News (OAN) that the billionaire is keen on buying the cable channel.

The suggestion came in a tweet from CEO Robert Herring on June 9.

Herring said on Twitter, “We just received a call from somebody very close to @elonmusk telling us that he would like to talk to us about purchasing @OANN.”

In response, Musk ruled out the idea, writing back, “Only Twitter.”

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla has been in the spotlight recently over his bid to take over Twitter, aiming to restore free speech on the social media platform.

Twitter accepted Musk’s $44 billion offer in April to acquire and take it private at $54.20 per share. The billionaire later said the deal was “temporarily on hold” pending the provision of complete information about spam and fake accounts, but that he was “still committed to acquisition.”

“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” Musk wrote on Twitter on May 17. “Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”

Musk’s legal team sent a letter to Twitter executives on June 6 alleging that, “Twitter has, in fact, refused to provide the information that Mr. Musk has repeatedly requested since May 9, 2022, to facilitate his evaluation of spam and fake accounts on the company’s platform.”

Given Twitter’s alleged inaction, Musk’s attorneys said that the business magnate “reserves all rights … not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement.”

The letter further stated, “At this point, Mr. Musk believes Twitter is transparently refusing to comply with its obligations under the merger agreement, which is causing further suspicion that the company is withholding the requested data due to concern for what Mr. Musk’s own analysis of that data will uncover.”

The Washington Post reported on June 8 that Twitter’s board of directors would comply with Musk’s demands for internal numbers, giving him access to its full “firehose.” This would include 500 million tweets posted each day, according to the newspaper, citing an anonymous source close to the matter.