I think this move also makes Elon appear selfish and the NYT interview only heightens my suspicion.
I don't think the view that Elon intentionally went to the NYT in full knowledge of getting a hit piece is accurate: he had a similar interview before where he got emotional, which interview turned out fine. A professional journalist will not abuse such moments and take them out of context to create bias.
By giving the NYT an interview he indeed entered hostile territory, but I think he misjudged David Gelles who is the main author of the article, a journalist who hasn't written a biased Tesla piece before. Look at the track record of David Gelles:
David Gelles
His last article that even mentioned Tesla was a year ago, and had a passing reference to Tesla that was positive:
Complex Car Software Becomes the Weak Spot Under the Hood
'Tesla has hired a new security chief from Google, who previously oversaw security for the Chrome web browser. And in early August, the company began offering $10,000 to outsiders who find security problems. (It had been giving $1,000.) “We are hiring!” the automaker wrote on a whiteboard at Def Con, a premier computer hackers’ conference in Las Vegas, in announcing the prize.'
'At the same conference, Tesla’s chief technology officer awarded the company’s commemorative “challenge coins” to two computer researchers. The researchers had revealed how to plug into the Tesla S computer system, unlock the sedan and stop the car under certain conditions — vulnerabilities that the company says are now patched.'
So I think Elon went to the NYT in the hope of getting an interview like the Wired one - and hoped that by giving an exclusive interview he'd get a
better piece than the Wired one. He also picked a journalist who seemed neutral and professional, who worked for the FT before, and who has written factually positive comments about Tesla in his last article that criticised other carmakers.
He was wrong: the negative emotions and honesty was used against him - and from the wording I suspect some of the quotes were actually Elon jokes taken out of context.
it appears Elon got in front of the “Saudi” news when the stock picked up momentum at $360s, five minutes later he tweets about 420.... Why? Perhaps it was accidental or maybe coincidental..
I too think the tweet was an intentional reaction to the Saudi news.
But note what the Saudi news was about: it was about the Saudis acquiring 3-5% of Tesla
despite Elon refusing them twice. The Saudis have the cash to make an instant hostile buyout bid for Tesla - I suspect the only reason they haven't done that when the price was $250 is because they know that
Elon is key to Tesla.
In that context the $420 tweet caused a
further spike in the price, effectively locking the Saudis out of acquiring more of Tesla via the open market without a heavy mark-up. I believe that was Elon's intention with the $420 tweet: to inform and to rally other investors to counter-balance the Saudis.
In that sense the NYT article had the opposite effect - which IMO further weakens the notion that this is part of some sort of effort to "manage" the stock price.
BTW., I'm not sure we should attribute yesterday's drop to the NYT article alone, there was also this news item:
Tesla stock slides 9% amid reports that Elon Musk and board will meet with SEC next week
"The upcoming meeting with the SEC will reportedly be focused on how Musk announced and handled the aftermath of his tweet last week, when he stated that funding was “secured” for Tesla’s
possible privatization at $420 per share"
Has anyone seen this confirmed independently, or is this just something that crawled up the TSLA-short sewers?
seriously it's been a struggle for me but on the bright side i seem to gravitate to companies that are disruptive. Have to know everything about them. Wait that might not be a good thing 
