the Saudis, put Musk up to buying Twitter to kill it

I think the Twitter investors put Musk up to buying Twitter because it was massively overvalued and they wanted that shit stain off their books. The Saudis thought they were going to get a pipeline directly into the American psyche with which to hype their various fascist passion projects.

wrote the entire amount of as public relations expense

The cool thing about being a Saudi prince is that you've got several trillion dollars to fuck around with before you find out.