I think Musk screwed the golden goose on this one.
I think he thought his large following would keep the site afloat. Sadly he's just alienated his fans in one way or another over the past handful of years and Twitter users did not like his extreme right-wing pandering.
He really should just focus on his electric cars and rocket businesses. Sell Twitter's corpse. Sell the other small companies he owns. Sigh...