So it was all about free speech.

lets clone twitter... we only need a few thousand users to scrape followers and such to clone accounts

Even with Elon known to be childish, this is a post hoc fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

What a silly conspiracy theory. Here's a better one: Elon desperately wants to be accepted into the US oligarch class, but he doesn't own a media company, doesn't have strong ties to military, intelligence, or politics, and he's generally despised by the 4th estate. The solution is to buy Twitter, a media company integral to the US intelligence propaganda machine, and where all the journos hang out.