Musk slams former Twitter management: 'Glorified activist organization' that was 'so absurdly overstaffed'

In an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Monday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk slammed the social media network's former management as a "glorified activist organization" that was "so absurdly overstaffed."

Musk took over ownership of Twitter in October 2022 after purchasing the platform for $44 billion.

Carlson and Musk discussed how the Twitter CEO was able to reduce the platform's staff by 80%. He explained that much of the social media network's workforce was dedicated to heavy censorship, something he has focused on scaling back since his takeover.

"Turns out, you don't need all that many people to run Twitter," Musk told Carlson.

"I mean, if you're not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization, and you don't care that much about censorship, then you can really let go of a lot of people, it turns out," he continued.

Musk explained that Twitter is just a "group text service at scale" that does not require a large staff to operate.

"I think we just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed," he explained.

Musk noted that despite the significant overstaffing at Twitter, the company failed to make many substantial improvements to the platform. He referred to the company's slow progress as a "comedy situation."

"If you look at the product development over time with Twitter – so like years versus product improvements – it's like a pretty flat line. So what are they doing?" Musk asked.

He cited how previous Twitter ownership added an edit option to tweets but that the feature failed to work reliably.

"It took a year to add an edit button that doesn't work most of the time. I mean, this is, I feel it was a comedy situation here," Musk said. "You're not making cars, you know, it's very difficult to make cars or get rockets to orbit. So you know, the real question is like how did it get so absurdly overstaffed? This is insane."

Despite the significant staff cuts, he claimed the company is "working better than ever."

Musk told Carlson that he anticipates that Twitter will continue to "play a significant role" in domestic and international elections.

He torched Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for donating significant sums to the Democratic party. Zuckerberg and his wife provided $419 million to the Center for Technology and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research, which contributed to Democratic candidates' campaigns, including President Biden's.

Musk asked Carlson if it was accurate that Zuckerberg "spent $400 million fundamentally in support of Democrats." Carlson confirmed that the Facebook CEO had backed left-leaning candidates and causes.

"Does that sound unbiased to you?" Musk asked.

He said that his goal is to make Twitter "as fair and even-handed as possible" with the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

"So not favoring any political ideology," the Twitter CEO clarified.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!