After months of moving fast and breaking things at Twitter, Elon Musk\u2019s been on a crash course of a different sort in the last several weeks, doing the rounds of interviews across a range of media events and with different media platforms (although TC\u2019s invite may have gotten lost in the mail\u2026).<\/p>\n

Yesterday, it was the turn of the WSJ, which featured him as its headliner to close off the opening night dinner of their CEO Council conference in London. Dialing in over video, showing up late for his half hour slot, Musk then proceeded to talk for more than an hour about Twitter (or \u201cX slash Twitter\u201d as Musk tried to call it), AI, Mars and more.<\/p>\n

The interview kicked off just minutes after it was announced that Musk would be interviewing Ron DeSantis on Wednesday (today) on Twitter\u2019s Spaces audio streaming platform, and that DeSantis would be making, in Musk\u2019s words, \u201cquite an announcement\u201d as part of it.<\/p>\n

Everyone widely expects that announcement to be about DeSantis officially entering the race for U.S. President, which prompted Thorold Barker, WSJ\u2019s EMEA editor, to ask Musk if he was endorsing DeSantis.<\/p>\n

Musk avoided a direct yes or no answer, which speaks to something else about him: he likes to talk in circles and his strategy sometimes goes that way, too. Musk replied that he sees Twitter as a \u201ctown square,\u201d where he wants everyone to participate. Yes, he wants to bring more audience to the platform at a time when so many appear to be running away; but he also wants to position Twitter as a new media platform in its own right.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s actions and words should sound extremely familiar. In fact, it often feels like he has spent a lot of time tearing apart the company only to land on an idea that is a repeat of what it was already trying to do: build a media company, which he is now doing \u2014 complete with a new CEO with advertising chops who he\u2019s poached from a media company, a strategy to court advertisers, and build entertaining content.<\/p>\n

\u201cRanging from the left, moderate, to what\u2019s considered right\u2026 I do think it\u2019s important that Twitter be about the reality and the perception of a level playing field, a place where all voices are heard, and where there\u2019s the kind of dynamic interaction that you don\u2019t really see anywhere else,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, today on Twitter, for example, AOC and Ted Cruz got into an argument, which was, independent of which side you agree with, very entertaining.\u201d (Cue audience laughter.) \u201cI [would] really just like someone fairly normal and sensible to be the President,\u201d he added later, to more chuckling from the audience.<\/p>\n

For Musk, the Twitter story he wants to tell \u2014 or at least hopes to sell \u2014 is that Twitter is on the return path from the layoffs, internal restructuring, and big changes. And that it\u2019s entertaining.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know how close that story is to reality at this point.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, and before investors run out of patience, Musk remains quite exasperating and compelling in equal measure. As Musk\u2019s half hour conversation stretched to more than one hour, he ranged from talking about ambitions to make Mars a self-sustaining civilization through to who might succeed him at any of his companies; the political situation in China through to the future of humanity.<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t many people who would be asked this range of questions in one sitting, and even fewer who would be interested to hear their answers. Yet that\u2019s what you get with this guy. Here\u2019s a selection of excerpts from the conversation:<\/p>\n

Musk says he has only one part-time assistant.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n