Elon already knew this of course. Buying Twitter was just an excuse to sell Tesla stock at a peak while avoiding suspicion. Now he’s teeing up his excuse to pull out. /conspiracy
It doesn't matter if 5% or 20% or even 40% of Twitter users are bots. If Musk manages to double the number of subscribers by making Twitter a household name then the purchase was a good investment.
The delay in closing the deal is just that, a delay, in the hope that the market will recover and the price of Tesla stock will recover, thereby making Musk's financing position much easier.
Nobody anticipated the downturn, otherwise Musk never would have made a $54 per share offer for Twitter in the first place, because obviously it's much lower now, as is much of the tech market.
It's hard to believe that making a binding $54 offer on a stock that's only $39 a month later was "4D chess". I do think $54 was a reasonable, maybe even lowball offer a month ago. Twitter itself hasn't changed much in a month operationally speaking, but the whole market changed in valuation.