Tesla Name Quietly Removed From Federal Contract After Uproar

The State Department was set to buy $400 million worth of armored Teslas from Elon Musk over the next five years. But after a report from Drop Site News on Wednesday exposed the massive conflict of interest, the department quietly deleted the word “Tesla” and changed the $400 million line item to a generic “armored electric vehicles.”

“After @DropSiteNews revealed Tesla was forecast to be given a $400 million contract for “Armored Tesla,” the State Department altered its spreadsheet to obscure Tesla’s role,” Ryan Grim wrote on X. “Metadata shows the spreadsheet was revised several hours after our story published.”

“I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t getting $400M. No one mentioned it to me, at least,” Musk wrote on X.

The “armored Tesla” notation was made in December 2024, a month after Trump was elected.  

The State Department did not respond to Drop Site News when asked about the sudden edit in the federal contact.

The question then is: Was this just a very dubious mistake? Or a clear cover-up? 

Donald Trump claimed that his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday would be the beginning of the end for the war in Ukraine—but his former national security adviser doesn’t think so.

Speaking with CNN late Wednesday, John Bolton argued that Putin had made a puppet out of Trump, using basic flattery to warm him up before stripping the U.S. leader’s position apart. Trump had posted on Truth Social following the call that Putin had “used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’”

“I think we know exactly what is going to happen,” Bolton told the network. “President Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin before the negotiations have even begun.

“The positions that Defense Secretary [Pete] Hegseth announced in Brussels—which, I’m sure I’d be stunned if Trump didn’t convey them directly to Putin in their phone call—constitute terms of a settlement that could have been written in the Kremlin,” Bolton said, noting that the details of the arrangement were practically Russian propaganda.

“It’s a complete reversal of the U.S. and NATO position on a number of issues; for example, up until today the official American position was that Ukraine should be returned to full sovereignty and territorial integrity. That’s gone,” he said.

“The question of NATO membership, as far back as 2008, had been that ultimately Ukraine would become a member. It doesn’t look like that’s around anymore, either,” Bolton continued.

“This is a palpable harm to American national security, because what Hegseth and Trump did today was not only blow up the NATO position on Ukraine, they blew up a thing called the Belovezha Accords,” Bolton said, referring to the 1991 agreement between three Soviet states that effectively dissolved the Soviet Union by declaring their independence from Moscow, creating the countries of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

“So it means that not only is unprovoked aggression by Russia against Ukraine now OK, every other former Republic in the Soviet Union is vulnerable to the same thing without any indication that the U.S. will do anything about it.”

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Munich on Friday to discuss the state of the war. But Bolton believes that Putin is opting to negotiate through Trump because he believes “he’ll get more out of it.”

“And he’s absolutely right,” Bolton said.

The damage to America’s reputation wouldn’t stop in Eastern Europe, according to Bolton, who noted that Beijing would likely be keeping a close eye on how the U.S. reacts to “unprovoked aggression” with regard to Taiwan. Bolton also described new National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who was confirmed on Wednesday, as “one of [Trump’s] worst nominations,” specifying that her controversial background would make it less likely for America’s allies to be willing to share intelligence with the United States.

Donald Trump bragged Wednesday about how easily he folded to his beloved Russian President Vladimir Putin, after handing the fellow autocrat everything he’d been hoping for.

“I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects.”

The president said that they’d spoken about how many Russians and Americans had been killed during World War II, and the two leaders agreed that they wanted to “stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.”

“President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE,’” Trump gushed.

“We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations,” Trump added. “We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.”

Trump said that he’d instructed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff to lead the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Before entering office, Trump had previously claimed that he would end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of being elected president. When pressed in September on his actual plan, Trump said, “I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get ’em together.”

Already, it’s clear that Trump simply intends to give in to Putin’s demands. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told U.S. allies that liberating all of Russia’s occupied Ukrainian territory was “an unrealistic objective.” He also backed down on the American push to have Ukraine join NATO, in compliance with a long-standing complaint from Putin.

Also on Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed as the director of national intelligence. Gabbard previously faced intense scrutiny for being a Russian stooge, with her own former staffers warning that she often read and shared articles from Russian state media. She also criticized American hostility toward Putin and pushed propaganda about Ukraine.

After Gabbard’s nomination was announced in November, the response in Moscow was “gleeful,” according to The New York Times. Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, fawned over Gabbard, reporting that the CIA and FBI were “trembling” in response to her nomination. The article stated that Ukrainians considered Gabbard to be “an agent of the Russian state.”

“Behind closed doors, people think she might be compromised. Like it’s not hyperbole,” one Republican Senate aide told The Hill in December. “There are members of our conference who think she’s a [Russian] asset.”

Gabbard was able to overcome any meaningful skepticism on the part of Republicans, as she was confirmed by every single Republican senator, save one: Senator Mitch McConnell. Now, Moscow can rejoice at the installation of an authoritarian sympathizer in Gabbard, and keep its stolen territory from Ukraine, while shutting the country out of a military alliance.

Even an apparent Trump win—the release of Marc Fogel, an American detained in Russia—was the result of trading a crypto-criminal back to Moscow. Trump previously railed against prisoner exchanges, claiming that they were extortion.

Donald Trump complained about a “new theory” about magnets during a rant about Boeing, while answering questions that were not about magnets or Boeing at all.

After swearing in Tulsi Gabbard Wednesday as his new director of national intelligence, the president embarked on a winding hour-long question-and-answer session with reporters, where he alleged that “billions and billions of dollars” had been “thrown away illegally.”

Trump threw the blame around widely, alleging massive fraud at the Department of Education, until the weave found its way to Boeing, the airplane manufacturer that produces the Boeing 747 the president flies on. Trump spoke at length and to little effect about how he was “not happy about that whole thing.”

“We signed a very strong contract, I signed a guaranteed maximum contract which they haven’t seen in a long time. And they’re saying they’re getting hurt by it,” Trump ranted, saying that Boeing wanted “more money.”

“But they have to produce the product and we expect them to produce the product. They have to produce the product, they agreed to build planes at a certain price,” Trump rambled. “They’re not used to that. They’re used to having time and material contracts where whatever it costs time and material. No dates. No anything. And it ends up costing five times more.”

Trump’s comments about cheaping out on Boeing are particularly disturbing considering recent allegations that the company might have cut corners during the production of its 737 Max 9 planes. In any case, it seems that reflecting about things that end up being more expensive than you might expect sent Trump’s brain careening into one of his old rants about magnets on boats.

“Take a look at the Gerald Ford, the aircraft carrier, the Ford. It was supposed to cost $3 billion. It ends up costing like $18 billion,” Trump said. “And they make, of course, all electric catapults which don’t work.”

The USS Gerald R. Ford actually cost roughly $13 billion to make, and it’s certainly not clear that its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System doesn’t work. But the president wasn’t done.

“And they have all magnetic elevators to lift up 25 planes at a time, 20 planes at a time. And instead of using hydraulic, like on tractors that can handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything, they use magnets,” Trump said.

“It’s a new theory. Magnets are going to lift the planes up, and it doesn’t work. And they had billions and billions of dollars of cost overruns,” he said.

While the production of the ship was delayed and experienced cost overruns, it’s not entirely clear why Trump has decided that the magnets on these ships don’t work. But, he has talked incoherently about this technology before. In January 2024, Trump baselessly claimed that magnets stop working when placed in water, and therefore were a stupid thing to put on a boat. When weaving his way through his grievances, the president’s mind has a tendency to repeat the hits, even the more inane ones.

“You look at the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that this country is going through. And we have to straighten it out,” Trump concluded.

European leaders are reeling after Trump’s phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding “peace” talks. 

Trump and Putin announced Wednesday that they’d begin talking to deliver an end to the war on Ukraine. The news came as Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, warned NATO on the same day that it could no longer rely on U.S. protection from Russia attacks—and that liberating all of Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine is “unrealistic.” 

Now the news of Trump and Putin putting their heads together to solve this crisis has sent a shudder through Europe, as its leaders fear the “solution” may be exactly what Trump has suggested in the past: Russia will be allowed to continue its invasion unfettered, with no care for the impacts on the rest of the continent.  

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius noted that it was “regrettable” that Hegseth had already professed that there was no way to end the Russian invasion before negotiations even began. 

“In my view, it would have been better to discuss a possible NATO membership for Ukraine or the country’s possible territorial losses only at the negotiating table and not to take it off the table beforehand,” Pistorius said, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers today. 

“There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine. And Ukraine’s voice must be at the heart of any talks,” U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey said to reporters at NATO headquarters. 

Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said it would be a “deadly trap” to accept any solution from Trump and Putin. 

“Whether we decide to fall under the illusion that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are going to find a solution for all of us, and that would be a deadly trap, or we will, as Europe, embrace our own economic, financial and military capacity,” he told CNN’s Natasha Bertrand.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy also spoke to Trump on Wednesday and called the discussion “meaningful.” 

“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the U.S., we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace. As President Trump said, let’s get it done. We agreed to maintain further contact and plan upcoming meetings.”