I don’t think they said that; just that Musk had talked about buying it, and that the two of them didn’t discuss it at all. Per the article:

Mr. Lawson said he hoped to own The Onion for the rest of his life. The business could be turned around, he said, if it focused first on satisfying its paying customers.

Mr. Lawson said he hadn’t discussed his purchase of The Onion with Elon Musk — the Tesla chief executive, who at one point discussed a bid for the site — despite their shared love of satire.

“Unbelievably, not all Silicon Valley people hang out in an evil mountainside lair,” Mr. Lawson said.