It's not knowable at this time why Musk made his comments. As a writer the best Levine can do is contextualize the situation and how it compares to norms of corporate finance, try to probe at possible plausible explanations for Musk's behavior, and evaluate the relative likelihood of each as well as the potential pitfalls. Of course none of the proposed explanations are really tenable. It isn't Levine's task to explain why Musk made the comments -- that falls rather squarely on Musk, or, perhaps, the SEC.