MSNBC’s Ruhle Is Angry Elon Musk and Bill Ackman Have the Right to Speak Their Minds and Not Get Censored

COHAN: “Social media is just ubiquitous. And, you know, again, you know, you had 140 characters on Twitter and then it went to 280 characters. Now, thanks to Elon Musk — and I call it Twix now, by the way, I’m trying to make Twix happen. I don’t know —“
RUHLE: “There you go. Trying. Yes.”
COHAN: “— I don’t know if it will. Trying not succeeding. Now, it’s an unlimited number of characters. And so, people like Bill Ackman just go hog-wild on it. And it’s not inarticulate or anything. It’s probably well thought out and he’s well-meaning. But he writes the kinds of things that anybody else who wasn’t independently wealthy, who wasn’t a billionaire, who didn’t work for himself would get fired long ago.”
RUHLE: “And why don’t they? Whether it’s Bill Ackman or Elon Musk, why is it that they can stand up and weigh in on anything with no consequences? Jamie Dimon can’t. They don’t run public companies.”
COHAN: “They don’t run public companies.” [crosstalk]
RUHLE: “Excuse me. Tesla. Elon Musk does. I guess he’s in a special category.”
COHAN: Well, he’s in a special category. Bill Ackman, you know, is independently wealthy. With — you know — he’s got a board at one of his public companies. But basically he runs a hedge fund where he’s not accountable to anybody but his investors. And he returns, you know, nice, high rates of return for those investors and, you know, they don’t seem to mind that he goes off on Claudine Gay or Sally Kornbluth at MIT.”
RUHLE: “But talk about this paradigm shift, because traditionally people that were that wealthy and powerful wanted to be like the Wizard of Oz. They wanted to be puppet masters, pulling strings without having to face the public. Bill Ackman — as just as an example — loves this, right? When he was first in the mouth of the lion, right, when it was Business Insider going after his wife, I picked up the phone and I called Bill, and I said, ‘Bill, let me just tell you, you do not want to do this. You’ve put yourself in the middle — it’s a mess.’ He couldn’t wait to get in it. He loved it. He was laughing on the phone. He wanted to just roll in the mud, as does Elon Musk. Why do they want to do this?”
COHAN: “Well Stephanie, you and I have been covering people like Bill Ackman for a long time and Elon Musk. They love to be in the limelight. They love to be at the center of attention.”