The most important thing to understand about Elon Musk’s public dickering over whether he will buy Twitter at $54.20 a share is that Elon has already signed a merger agreement committing him to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share. It’s a legally binding agreement and the Twitter board has said it intends to enforce it—M&A code for don’t mess with the deal unless you want a legal fight. Elon has a few ways to renege, of course, but not many. He can find “something” during his due diligence of Twitter that constitutes a reason for him to abandon the deal. But I don’t see what that could be, and it’s certainly not an abundance of “bots.” Obviously, if he can’t come up with the money he has committed to the $44 billion deal, then he would have an out, and then he could presumably pay his $1 billion break-up fee and walk away.