‘I Was Trying To Protect Elon!’ Matt Taibbi Tells Jimmy Dore Podcast He Took Twitter Files Off Twitter To HELP Musk

Twitter Files co-author Matt Taibbi told The Jimmy Dore Show he was “trying to protect” Elon Musk by taking the work product off Twitter and onto Donald Trump’s Truth Social.

Last week, Caleb Howe wrote that Taibbi was “nervous” about the state of his work when he decided to post it elsewhere:

Star Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi is “nervous” about leaving the Twitter Files “to the whims” of Elon Musk after his public breakup with the company and its owner. As a result, he’s uploading the contents of that reporting to competing sites like Donald Trump’s Truth Social, the writer announced in a scathing Substack article Thursday.

And in a video clip posted to The Jimmy Dore Show Saturday morning, Taibbi explained to guest host Aaron Maté that it was all for Musk’s own good:

AARON MATÉ: I know that recently it’s been reported and you’ve talked about this, that you and Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, had a rift.

He became convinced for some odd reason that Substack, which you write for, is a threat to Twitter. And that led to basically a dispute between you. As I understand he wanted you to leave Substack to join Twitter and you refused to do. And by the way, the people who accuse you of doing Elon Musk bidding have been conspicuously silent on that, that you refused Elon Musk’s demands there. But what does this mean for the Twitter files? And can you give us any sense of what’s coming next?

MATT TAIBBI: Well, we still have a lot of stuff. I mean, we haven’t. We have you know, I wouldn’t say a lifetime, but we’ve got a lot of material. So we’re going to report all that out as much as we can. I’m sad about it. Yeah, I had, I like Elon. I think he did a really great thing. I think there’s a misunderstanding here and it’s unfortunate. I hope he continues it with other reporters. You’d be a great choice, you know, if you if he if he decided to go that way. Um, but yeah, no, it’s it’s, it’s unfortunate.

Um, and, you know, he’s he’s indicated that he doesn’t really want, he thinks that all good things would really have to come to an end. He’s made these sort of elliptical comments about it. It’s too bad. Just one last thing about that. You know, this whole business about me maybe going to Twitter or using the subscription service that they have.

And, you know, I was I was trying to protect Elon, actually in that situation, like my understanding of the whole thing and I was trying to communicate this to him, is that the Twitter files wouldn’t be taken seriously if people saw that there was any kind of financial, even theoretical financial relationship between the two of us. And this had to be public, you know, that there was no, there was no kind of connection. And he would you would be getting lots of negative PR if I’d done that move, he would never hear the end of it.

But he didn’t see it that way, which is unfortunate. So but, you know, it was a good thing it lasted. And I think we learned a lot of good stuff.