Elon Musk Announces Plan to Step Down as Twitter CEO Transcript

While tonight, Elon Musk setting social media on fire again by announcing that he does plan to step down as CEO of Twitter. Hang on. As usual, this latest bombshell comes with caveats, interpretations, and a lot of speculation. Here’s NBC Bay Area’s Terry McSweeney.

Here’s the tweet from the owner of Twitter. “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job. After that, I will just run the software and servers teams.” This in response to a Twitter poll, which overwhelmingly wanted Musk to step down. Now, he hasn’t stepped down yet, but he may soon if he can find the right person, but he’ll run two critically important teams. San Jose State engineering professor and tech expert Ahmed Banafa says Musk had to do something.

For me, it’s clear that he’s under pressure from inside and outside. What I mean by that, from Twitter and the investors, and from also the investor of Tesla, have to do something about it.

Looking for investors may have been what Musk was doing last week at the World Cup in Qatar. He says he’ll stay on to run the software and server teams while a CEO working for Musk would also be calling the shots. That, says Banafa, would be a problem.

If you want to be the CEO of a company, you are the Chief Executive Officer. That’s mean you’re responsible for all the decisions, and if something went wrong, then you’re going to be responsible. But not to have two captains in one ship, everybody’s pointing in a different direction.

Banafa says perhaps the perfect replacement for Musk is not available.

Basically, we are looking for Steve Jobs again, come into Twitter, and save it, and turn it around, and make it another Apple. And it’s not impossible, it’s just a matter of finding the right person and giving that person every opportunity so he or she can change it.

Professor Banafa says something had to give it Twitter because ever since Elon Musk bought the company 50 days ago, the only thing coming out of this building has been drama. In San Francisco. Terry McSweeney, NBC Bay Area news.