The thing is, MBS could step in and buy the rights for a lot of money to help him out, then Trump could go “see, it was worth exactly what I said it was!” The Saudis were willing to write off enough money to Musk to help him kill Twitter just to watch it die - they can afford it.
History has many examples of how shipping urban intellectuals off to work on farms rids you of said intellectuals and leads to (checks notes) mass starvation. Since that’s the worst possible outcome, I imagine he’s going to go with that.