After announcing that he was spiking his planned $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Friday, Elon Musk is now trolling Twitter itself for threatening to take legal action. In a series of memes posted to his account, Musk joked that, should Twitter actually try to take him to court, he’ll end up getting what he wanted anyway.
Musk claimed in an SEC filing that Twitter didn’t provide sufficient data regarding the total number of spam and fake accounts, or “bots,” on the social media site. The filing noted that, “While Twitter has provided some information, that information has come with strings attached, use limitations or other artificial formatting features, which has rendered some of the information minimally useful to Mr. Musk and his advisors.”
In response, Twitter’s board chairman Bret Taylor tweeted its commitment “to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk” and threatened “to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.”
In response to that response, Musk virtually laughed it off, literally posting a meme of himself laughing. It was a sequential meme, in which Musk laid out the series of events, with each frame including a picture of him laughing harder.
“They said I couldn’t buy Twitter. Then they wouldn’t disclose bot information,” the captions read. “Now they want to force me to buy Twitter in court. Now they have to disclose bot information in court.”
Musk then followed up by posting a picture of Chuck Norris, adding an additional tweet that simply said “Chuckmate.”
Ridding Twitter of bots has long been a staple of Musk’s plans for the social media platform, with the Tesla CEO warning Twitter last month that a lack of compliance with his demand for data on them could threaten the deal. Musk even accused Twitter of “actively resisting” his efforts to find out how much of its user base is made up of spam-bots.
His acquisition of Twitter was set to close later this year, pending the approval of Twitter stockholders and regulators. According to the agreement, Musk faces a potential $1 billion penalty to the company if the deal falls through.