Rachel Maddow ripped into Elon Musk on Wednesday in a segment that had a lot of people riled up, claiming that Elon Musk had somehow convinced the State Department to buy $400 million in armored Tesla units.
This may be the lamest Maddow attack ever (and that’s saying something) as she desperately tried to mock Musk. How bizarre these folk on the left are when their craziness is all they have to show. The relevant part past the mocking starts at 3:43.
“Well now, as the top campaign donor to U.S. President Donald Trump, Elon Musk has somehow convinced the U.S. government — specifically the U.S. Department of State — that the taxpayers of America should spend $400 million buying ‘armored Tesla (production units),'” she said. She claimed it was a line item in the “latest procurement forecast” that was “circulating online.” “It’s definitely not at all illegal or profoundly corrupt” to have Musk looking into waste and abuse when he had “billions in government contracts.” She mocked the Cybertruck, saying she hoped the government wasn’t planning on parking it under a “walnut tree or out in the rain.” “But otherwise, that’s actually a super kosher use of taxpayer funds, and not at all $400 million worth of self-dealing by the president’s top campaign donor to whom he has handed the keys to the kingdom.”
She’s misleading about the nature of the Cybertruck and apparently missed that its sturdiness may have saved lives in the Las Vegas attack at the Trump Hotel, as the police noted, since it channeled the explosion up and not out due to its construction.
READ MORE: WOW: Check Out What Was In the Back of the Cybertruck That Blew Up Outside Trump Hotel in Vegas
But Maddow also leaves out a few other critical pieces of information — including, rather importantly, that this line item was from December under the Biden administration and it hadn’t moved to being a contract, according to Quartz. It also didn’t just list Teslas.
The Biden administration had asked the State Department to explore interests by private companies to make armored EVs, leading to a public Request for Information to find interested EV-makers, a department spokesperson said, adding that only one company responded at the time.
An official solicitation for EV manufacturers to bid on making armored EVs is on hold with no current plans to use it, the spokesperson said, adding that the government has not awarded any contracts. [….]
The procurement document lists other armored vehicles, including a BMW (BMWYY0.00%) X5 or X7. According to the State Department website, the document was last revised on Dec. 23 — about a month before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration.
So, this certainly wasn’t because of the relationship between Trump and Musk.
Indeed, Musk busted her on this fact: “Hey @Maddow, why the lie?”
Musk said on X, “I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t getting $400M. No one mentioned it to me, at least.”
Even Politifact busted the story, indicating it was just a bid solicitation.
In a statement to PolitiFact, the State Department confirmed Tesla isn’t in store for that money. The department said the Biden administration had pursued the possible purchase. Biden had signed an executive order in 2021 encouraging government agencies to buy electric vehicles when possible.
The department also said that specifying “Tesla” in the spreadsheet was an error. The statement said that only one company had responded to the offering, and that was Tesla, but that the spreadsheet should have cited a generic electric vehicle manufacturer rather than Tesla specifically, since it was open to any company. It described the bid solicitation as being on hold, with “no current plans to issue it.”
So let’s review, Rachel, who should we be mocking here in this scenario for having no credibility at all?
Hint: check a mirror, because it isn’t Elon Musk.
