well this morning twitter shares are already dropping on the news that elon musk declined to join the company's board of directors a board seat would have prevented musk twitter's largest stakeholder from owning more than 14.9 percent of the company's stop biotech entrepreneur vivekram swami is author of the upcoming book nation of victims and he joins us now good morning vivek good morning ainsley good morning so not gonna you're not gonna take that seat on the board so that means he can buy as many shares as you want right yeah look i actually i have to say that i think he's gonna be more effective at driving change off the board than on the board i was personally happy when i saw elon musk announce his nine plus percent stake in the company i was a little disappointed when i saw them agree to give him one board seat because i know how the managerial class plays this game he's going to be one of 12 on the board subject to constraints about what he can and can't say what he can and can't do how much more he can and cannot buy up to 14 per the standstill agreement i think he's going to be much more effective now as the top shareholder by far driving change as a voice from the outside and potentially unconstrained with respect to how much he can actually buy so i think this is actually a positive development and the other thing i want to say ainsley is over the last week over the last few days i've actually had an opportunity on unrelated matters to talk to some of the top venture capitalists in silicon valley the topic of elon musk comes up he has a lot of people quietly rooting for him to drive change here and shake things up none of them will actually say it publicly and that's exactly why he needs to be doing it is we have this culture of fear in the valley in corporate america and using shareholder power to be able to drive that change from the top i think is actually one of the most promising ways to do it so i'm really rooting for success here i think people most americans are happy about this because they want to see change over at twitter so why do the stock prices go down well like the market does funny things and and you know look i'm not going to be a guru and giving you my interpretation but i personally think that actually you could interpret it very differently than the market appears to be interpreting it right now to say that he's actually going to be unconstrained in his ability to buy more shares which would have been contractually restrained by if he had actually joined the board and signed the standstill agreement proposed by twitter so he's one of the few people on the planet who actually personally could buy this company and you know what he does what he wants to on a whim so i'm not going to make a prediction of what elon musk wants to do but if he wants to either take a hostile take over the company or even take a bigger stake to drive more change from the outside i think he's going to need other people who are willing to step up and see him do it but at the end of the day if a few other people help step up and actually help him do it i think this could actually be a more promising vehicle to drive change and even create more value by expanding the tent of people that twitter actually serves so i think there's going to be possibly a good move both for free speech in our country but also just for making twitter a better and more valuable company well because all the employees are working from home he's suggesting that the headquarters in silicon valley become a homeless shelter open it up to the homeless because california you know the governor said come here if you're homeless we want you we'll see if that happens thanks so much for that for coming on with us thank you i'm steve ducey i'm brian kilny and i'm ainsley earhart and click here to subscribe to the fox news youtube page to catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis
