I think that we have a board of rational actors, I really do. I think that they're gonna do what they think is in the best interests of shareholders, in terms of price per share. I think that's how they're going to operate... They're gonna try and find the best price. They're gonna reject his offer. I don't think he's going to up the offer significantly to the point that they get to get it done. They're going to go out and run a long strategic process. Three months from now, we're still going to be running that process. That process is not going to be done. No one's going to have a real answer. Elon's going to trail off and do something else, and this whole thing will kind of fade into the sun.View on YouTube
Key elements of Friedberg’s prediction did not match what actually happened:
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Board reaction to Musk’s offer
He predicted the Twitter board would reject Musk’s bid and run a long strategic process to seek a better price. In reality, after briefly adopting a poison pill, Twitter’s board unanimously accepted Musk’s $44 billion ($54.20/share) offer on April 25, 2022, and signed a definitive merger agreement—just 11 days after the public bid and within days of the podcast’s release. (en.wikipedia.org) -
State of play three months later (mid‑July 2022)
He said that three months from April 16, 2022 (i.e., around July 16, 2022), Twitter would still be in an open-ended sale process with “no real answer.” Instead, by that time there was already a signed merger agreement in place, and Twitter’s board was urging shareholders to approve the deal. Twitter set a shareholder vote on the Musk merger for September 13, 2022, and later that vote overwhelmingly approved the transaction. (cnbc.com) Although Musk attempted to terminate the deal on July 8 and Twitter sued to enforce it, this was litigation over an existing definitive deal, not an unresolved strategic sale process. (en.wikipedia.org) -
Musk “trailing off” and the saga fading
Friedberg expected Elon Musk to “trail off and do something else” and for the saga to fade. Instead, Musk remained central to the story: Twitter sued him in July 2022 to force completion, the dispute dominated business and tech news into the fall, and Musk ultimately closed the acquisition and took Twitter private on October 27, 2022, later rebranding it as X and remaining deeply involved in its operations. (en.wikipedia.org)
Because the board did not reject the offer, there was a definitive deal well before three months had passed, and Musk and the saga did not fade away but culminated in a completed acquisition, the prediction is best classified as wrong.