So he wanted it to take it off the stock market, fix it, yada yada but then realized this is a bad idea?
The stock was absurd -- cars with QA issues and lots of recalls outperforming stocks like Ford or Toyota, companies with decades of making reliable vehicles.
Everyone knew it was overvalued by a long shot, and if Musk sold it would crater. So create a headline grabbing buy that would justify shedding tons of shares, then back out and keep the $$$. When TSLA later has a correction he can just ignore it -- got his money already -- and launch some buybacks on the cheap.
Except he couldn't back out.