I have no doubt he’d end up as a puppet for Musk’s whims. Perhaps a great fall guy if Musk wants to blend into the background without actually ceding control.

That looks to be the plan. Whoever takes this job at this point is setting themselves up for failure. Anybody smart enough to run Twitter will pass and anybody stupid enough to try will end up being blamed even though there isn't a thing they could do about it at this point.

I'm open to being surprised.

Plan 'C':

Musk eats his loss, re-IPO's twitter at 10 cts on the dollar, prays the investors will cut him a deal and the new owners will do what they can to salvage the wreck. That would probably still be a dicey proposition. The cat is out of the bag now, Mastodon and a couple of others are now suffering growth pains for the first time in a long time and the most active users are all wondering if they should bail or have already done so.

It's the biggest self-own in the history of tech. But hopefully it will result in centralized social media becoming a thing of the past. That at least would be one positive thing to come out of this.