Elon Musk changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit” on Wednesday and then posted a video of himself entering the lobby of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters bearing a sink in his hands.
The curious antics come as Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest person, moves closer to finalizing a protracted deal that will give him control of Twitter, and turn the company into a privately held business.
Musk has told co-investors that he plans to close the $44 billion deal to acquire the social networking site by Friday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters this week.
After offering to buy Twitter in April so that users can post what they want without restriction—following the platform’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump in fear of further incitement of violence after the Capitol riot—Musk’s proposal was met with some resistance.
But eventually his bid was accepted. That’s when he decided he wanted to back out of the deal because of the number of “bot” accounts on the platform, which Musk says Twitter did not correctly report. In an attempt to force him to keep his end of the deal, Twitter sued Musk—leading a judge to rule that he had until Oct. 28 to purchase the social media platform.
And it looks like that could be happening ahead of the judge’s deadline. Not only did he change his Twitter bio, but Musk just posted a video of himself at Twitter’s headquarters—and it looks like he’s already moving things around. In the video, he’s recorded holding what looks like a sink, paired with his caption to the post: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
A few hours earlier, Musk tweeted that “a beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism—people are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias.”
So he’s not just signaling that he’s set to move forward and hold up his end of the deal, he’s also reaffirming his reasoning behind buying Twitter in the first place.
But what comes next is still uncertain. If his deal closes, as it’s looking at this point, Musk could be planning to lay off 75% of Twitter’s staff. He’s reportedly spoken to prospective investors about reducing the company’s headcount to 2,000 workers from its current 7,500, according to the Washington Post.
Twitter’s stock is up 1.33% in anticipation of Musk finally closing the deal.
