Bobby Allyn
Appearances
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
Don't try to distract me. Well, if anything, that's sort of that masculine energy Zuck wants to bring back. So hope springs eternal for your fist fight.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
I mean, she's got experience. Oh, yeah.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
I mean, first of all, I'm trying to make technoligarchy happen. Technoligarchy. There's potential. It hasn't quite caught on. I think my editors maybe even cut that from my story. But that would be one difference from you're asking an oligarchy versus this one feels very, very tech-based. It would look a lot like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and the top people from...
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
Google and TikTok and Apple sitting directly behind Trump at his invitation in front of even his own cabinet, mixed in with his family members as if they're honorary sons of his.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
So it's the president, his family, a row of tech billionaires, essentially, the cabinet, and then Republican governors and lawmakers who are the people in theory he will actually need to, for instance, pass his legislation. Most of them were in the overflow room.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And I mean, to Bobby's point, it's not just that potentially these people are in a place to influence policies and federal government contracts that can benefit them and their companies and their friends, although you're certainly seeing that.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
I mean, I was struck by when Donald Trump in his inauguration speech mentioned planting the stars and the stripes on Mars, the cameras all immediately panicked. hand to Elon, who did two big thumbs up and kind of mouthed, yeah. And then Elon, when he was speaking later at the rally at the Capital One Arena, he sort of mimed planting, again, American flags on Mars.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And he's on the stage and he's going... I mean...
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
Bam! Bam! Yeah! Bam! As if he's planting these flags into the rock dust of Mars.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
SpaceX and Bezos' Blue Origin, they want to race into the galaxies and they're in a position to make it easier for themselves to do so.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
What I've also been struck by is the influence a lot of these people will have on issues where they have no expertise whatsoever. I mean, Elon essentially moved down to Mar-a-Lago after Trump was elected. And, you know, we reported he was in meetings where they were determining whether
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Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
cabinet choices and not just ones that had to do with technology, but anything from Department of Justice to Department of Education. And that has frustrated some people in Trump's world. But I'm also struck by something when I was covering Trump's first term, someone said to me, which was what people really like about him in sort of ways, his populist approach to information. They said, look,
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
No, I can't. I mean, I, until very recently, I used to work at the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos. And sometimes people would do the calculation of Jeff Bezos buying the Post as the equivalent of me buying not even an overpriced latte.
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Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
If Lara Trump is in the Oval Office with her sorority sisters and to be clear, I don't actually even know if she was or was not in a sorority. But they said she's in there, you know, with her sorority sisters. The president is just as likely to turn to them and say, what do you think we should do about Ukraine as he is to his generals? So when you have people like Bezos and Zuckerberg and.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
Elon just talking to Trump in the same way he is as likely to ask his caddy as his Defense Department secretary for advice. He is also going to be turning to them with all sorts of questions where they may stand to benefit and or they may have absolutely no expertise or right weighing in.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
Oh, to me, I think it's quite simple and obvious. On the one hand, I don't think he is going to bend to them. He's made no indication that he's going to do what they want if he disagrees with it. But what he gets is... a bunch of uber wealthy influential people bending themselves to his will.
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Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
So he didn't like fact-checking on Meta's platform and Meta's no longer doing that sort of fact-checking, right? You know, I think another example is Elon wrote a huge check during the election, which was valuable. And there's a world in which Elon... strokes another check to an outside group that helps him push a priority.
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Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
When you have rich people trying to please you at every beck and turn, that feels pretty beneficial to me. And if they cross him or if they dismay him, he can cast them out. And we may see that.
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Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And that I can't really conceive. So I certainly can't conceive this.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And the other dynamic here is that, as with all oligarchies or technoligarchies, there's a sense from sort of people in the stalwart, hardcore MAGA movement that some of these tech bros are diluting it. And the person who is kind of leading the charge right now is Steve Bannon. Mm-hmm. who's really pushing hard and publicly going against them.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And Bannon told me, I talked to him when I was reporting the story, and he said, the tech bros think it's a huge flex that they're up on stage with Trump, but it's not the flex they think it is. He described it to me as Trump has these people on display. He said, I don't see what these nerds are getting out of it.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And they're too dumb to understand that it's like walking into Teddy Roosevelt's game lodge and seeing all the stuffed heads mounted on display. And you can sort of take it one step further and envision it's like a game show where there's a trap door under one of them. And they suddenly just disappear through the stage if things go awry. Yeah.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
So you might not always think of AOC and Bannon as aligned, but I put that out there for you.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
Not to quote Bannon again, but he is imminently quotable. But right. As I mentioned earlier, he's one of the people who is sort of fighting against what he views as this tech oligarchy. But in talking about Biden's comments, he said to me, look, dude, you created it. The Democrats created this because you thought big tech was on your side and now they've turned.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And so the way he described it was you guys created it. And now it's a problem for me in the war room to handle. So you might not always think of AOC and Bannon as aligned. Rarely ever. I put that out there for you. I mean, I will say one difference is I've always believed having covered Trump that one of his powers is his shamelessness.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
And whatever you believed of what was happening in the Biden era, Biden would not have had those people, that group of people. sitting up there with his children, his grandchildren in front of his cabinet, while Democratic lawmakers and governors were shunted to a further away space. So yeah, the public shameless embrace is a difference.
It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
In the camera shot, in those photos and images and videos that are getting sent around the world.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
I won't name them, but I have some colleagues who are older than me who thought it was do-do-doggy. And I had to be like, no, it's not doggy, it's doge. I think there is some kind of generational element to it. I think some people who aren't on the internet, as much as you and I are, may have missed the pronunciation and what it's a nod to.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
So, I mean, everyone thought it was going to be a little bit more incremental, a little bit more gradual. and that they would maybe go before Congress and say, hey, here's a bunch of spending that USAID does abroad. We want to cut like 20% of it. That would be like a front page story on the New York Times, right?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
But instead, instead of being like a blue ribbon commission, I mean, he has just moved the office of Doge into the White House and just dismantling entire agencies, just knocking things down to the studs. Completely.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
So nobody envisioned, and I talked to colleagues of mine who covered the Trump campaign, nobody envisioned exactly this kind of incredibly influential, totally unchecked role that Elon would be playing. It's why people jokingly say, you know, it used to be Elon was a shadow VP. Now people are saying, you know, President Musk, because he just has an incredible amount of power here.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
There was this very... I can't help but laugh because the image is just so funny. But this very funny press conference in the Oval Office in which Trump was seated at his desk and then Musk was there with his kid on his shoulders and sometimes on the ground. And they were talking about Doge.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Can you describe what it looks like? Sure. So we have a gold money sign. It says Department of Government Efficiency. If this were a real government department, I'm not sure that we'd have this crypto-looking money sign as the icon, but there it is. Right next to that, it has a little American flag, and it says, An Official Website of the United States Government. Okay, so it sounds official.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Okay. It says estimated savings $105 billion. Amount saved per taxpayer, it says $652.17. So there you go, PJ. According to Elon, Doge has already saved both of us $652. All right.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Okay. So one savings that Musk has boasted about is canceling a $9 million payment to Reuters, so the news agency, for large-scale social deception, right? And Musk has presented this as some sort of smoking gun that the government was paying Reuters to deceive people, right?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
But when reporters actually looked into this, first of all, it wasn't Reuters, the news agency, but was Thomas Reuters Special Service, which is like a data and research arm of Reuters, totally separate company. And the Defense Department had a contract with them to fight against social deception. And the kicker is the contract was actually signed in Trump's first term. Oh, wow.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Exactly right. And look, by the time the fact checkers come out and say, hey, guys, this actually is a terrible example of wasteful spending for all of these reasons. The news cycle has already moved on and Musk is already promoting some other savings. Mm-hmm. The media's out here truth-squatting all these contracts. No, we're going to scold you. No, it is not a $5 billion contract.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Yeah, sure. I'm Bobby Allen. I am a tech correspondent at NPR. How long have you been covering tech? Something like five years or so. Kind of fell into it sideways. I was in D.C. covering politics and breaking news. And somebody tapped me on the shoulder one day and was like, hey, you want to go to San Francisco and cover tech?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
It is a $5 million contract. I don't know. Some fans of Elon Musk might be like, well, at least we're saving $5 million. Sometimes there's a journalistic win, but to their supporters, I don't know that that's changing any minds.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
They issued this bullet point statement that's basically like, oh yeah, this is something that started in the Biden administration. So they're pointing a finger at the Biden White House, the Biden State Department, and they basically suggest, oh, well, this was a Biden thing. We're getting rid of it. We're not gonna move forward.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
I think the language they used was, it's indefinitely on hold, whatever that means, but they have no plans to pursue it. So the subtext is both, this wasn't our call.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And I was like, honestly, when I pick up newspapers, I don't even read the tech section. So I think you're asking the wrong guy. But then they were like, yeah, but this is where all the power is. These people need more accountability. You think politics are important? Really, the decision makers and the gatekeepers are. in Silicon Valley, and I said, okay, fine, I'll do it.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
In my position, I don't have access to these confidential State Department records. So when the State Department issues a statement saying, here is our explanation, I, correspondent for NPR, have to update my story saying, here's the State Department's explanation. And that's what I did. I was like, they're pointing at Biden and they're saying it's over with.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
We are expunging this from the spreadsheet. Nothing to see here, folks.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
It didn't exactly pass the sniff test for so many different reasons. But again, I don't have the access they have. And so, you know, an investigative reporter might say, OK, we'll just file a FOIA. But in this Trump era, most reporters are assuming FOIAs are just going to be dead in the water. So I was like, OK, cool. Yeah, I'll file this FOIA.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Maybe I'll get a response like three years from now that it's been delayed. But I'm a breaking news reporter. I'm interested in Elon. I'm interested in tech. I'm interested in what Musk is doing in the White House. I want an answer now. So I'm just making as many calls as I can. I'm trying to dig around.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And then finally, something lands in my inbox, and it came in the form of an anonymous reader complaining about my story. And let me just say, when you work at a national news organization and you do stories about divisive figures like Trump and Musk, these kinds of complaints are legion.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
All the time. I'm sure you get them too, PJ. It's just they're constant. So I just took a deep breath. I go, OK, another one of these. Can you can you read the email? Sure. Let me let me pull it up. And again, this came in from a person who was not willing to identify themselves. Okay.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
This person says, you mentioned that the White House says the contract had been started under the Biden administration. This is not true. The State Department was a laggard in federal fleet electrification and reluctant to acquire any, never mind the necessary charging infrastructure. They had no money for this.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And so after reading this, I thought this is not just somebody carping to me.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
It's someone who seems to be suggesting they were in the Biden White House and they, better than anyone I could imagine, would be in a position to know that this is BS and that when Trump suggests that this whole thing started in the Biden administration, this person might be able to definitively prove that is not the case.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And I was super excited to get this person on the phone, but they weren't so excited to talk to me.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
How do you feel? Oh, it was amazing. I just, like, you know, poured a hot cup of coffee, sat down, pushed this thing on my two monitors, my work at home station, and then I was like, oh, wait, it's only seven pages? Oh, well... It's not going to take very long to read this. I can do it pretty quickly.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
But the important big revelation, if that's what you want to call it, in this document is that the Biden administration had set aside $483,000 for buying EVs this year, which obviously is very different than $400 million. And this document, just like... Is it something you can read from? Is it just like a spreadsheet? Totally, yeah. It's a government document.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Yeah, and I think the way that Silicon Valley operates has taken a lot of clues from Washington, right? Having this army of communications people who, you know, send you responses and answers to your questions by like committees of 10 operating with complete opacity, trying to front run stories before you get your own stories out. Just the kind of constantly at war with reporter kind of vibe.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And this felt like I like, you know, Christmas came earlier or something. It says for bobbyallen.pdf. How exciting. Okay, click. And I scrolled down and it's a government document that the State Department sent to the White House being like, hey, we know you officials working under Biden have all of these electric vehicle requirements and standards and goals.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
We know that you want us to put some money aside to fulfill some of these goals. Here is our plan. Here are our concerns. Here's the amount of money we want to throw at it. And yeah, it was like 400 and some thousand dollars to buy some EVs for the State Department. And then there was this other little box. I mean, the first thing I did, actually, PJ, when I got this document was control F Tesla.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And so when I did that, it brought me to this box. And when I click Tesla, there is so much lingo, right? But it basically says, there's been a request to collect information about capabilities from industry. It's received one response, Tesla in parentheses, which the AV program is reviewing. That's armored vehicle.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
So right now, if you're a foreign service worker or like an ambassador in like Mogadishu and you're going from a meeting site, you know, back to the embassy, you'll have a car that's paid for by taxpayers. Typically, it's a car that was built to be armored. It's a super, super secure car.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And it'll drive you from point A to point B. And what everything we're talking about here is about is there was a push in the Biden administration to just like start thinking about the United States global footprint when it comes to our use of weapons. combustion engines and, you know, how can we maybe replace some of them with EVs? And so this is where this initiative is coming from.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Like, oh, maybe one day down the road, like really far down the road when the technology really advances and everyone has charging stations.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Totally, totally, totally. Yeah, especially in remote, conflict-torn parts of the world. I mean, you're not going to find it. Tesla charging station. But it was this idea of just like, let's start looking into it. And because Tesla is the biggest electric field company, they're like, let's start engaging Tesla about that.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
But their response was super underwhelming. So the State Department writes me and it says the numbers provided in the document were an estimate. As mentioned, this was a request for information, not a solicitation for a contract. The RFI.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
request for information was strictly to gather information and the department of state has no intentions to move forward with the solicitation um which is a mouthful right but in plain english as someone who has been obsessed with this story for a little bit what the state department is saying here is they're canceling this effort they're not planning to go forward with it and in terms of how do they come up with the 400 million
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
They're conceding here it was an estimate. They're not saying by whom or what exactly it was going to purchase or where these Teslas would be sent, but that's what they gave me. And I obviously replied to them with a long list of follow-up questions for a little bit more clarity and got nothing, but that's what they said.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
It's just like brass knuckles. It's fighting these comms people. It's fighting the lieutenants around, you know, really powerful billionaires that are running these companies. It's very hostile. It's very confrontational. And I kind of like that in this sitcom.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Every time you put on CNN or MSNBC, you see talking heads fighting about conflicts of interests and potential abuses of power. But here we have a very specific example of that maybe happening, and something about $400 million of taxpayer money paying for Cybertrucks just set people off. I mean, still, my inbox is full of responses. My signal chats are full of random people reaching out.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
It's just, I'm getting a flood of people offering their opinion, expressing outrage, or Elon fans attacking me for pointing this out. Yeah, it just, it really did kind of strike a nerve.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I invite drama and like fueling drama, and I'm like the biggest gossip anyone knows. So maybe I'm perfect for the job, but it's not for everyone, that's for sure.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Yeah, I think I learned, you know, there's a certain amount of cynicism a lot of reporters have sometimes covering Trump and covering Musk, which is like every day is, someone put it recently, every day is a white Bronco day, right? Every day feels like it's OJ speeding on the freeway in his white Bronco. It's like that level of an insane breaking news day.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And no matter what you do or say or can expose, it's going to wash over by the morning. Yeah. To be optimistic, I kind of learned that, you know, if you push hard enough, maybe there can be some change. Maybe there can be pressure. Maybe the audience will care. It's a very noisy, chaotic world right now, and it's only going to become more so, but...
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
But look, I never thought that, you know, millions of people would care about this tiny little line item in a State Department spreadsheet. Sounds pretty boring to me, but it's consequential. It's consequential. So yeah, I think it gives me hope that at least the audience cares about this kind of stuff. What still is the part of this mystery that we don't know the answer to?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
What we don't know is who put the $400 million into that document. Was it a Doge worker? Was it a State Department worker? Was it Elon himself? No idea, big question mark there. So who did this? And equally as puzzling, Was this a mistake? Were there zeros added? Or was this really their intention for this to be quietly done?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
$400 million of taxpayer money for Teslas to be quietly just pushed through, no one would notice, and that would be it. And I'd love a follow-up to be, hey, we found the man or woman who put this in there, and they said it was a mistake, and here's their story. If you're listening and you're that person, let's talk. because I would love to close that chapter out. But as of now, we just don't know.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Yeah, so there's this reporter, Ryan Grimm, and he did a story pointing out, I think, is it Dropsite is a website he writes for? I think it's Dropsite News. Dropsite News, exactly. He did a story that just put a spotlight on this one item in a super boring, otherwise like ho-hum, whatever, State Department spreadsheet of what the State Department thinks it's going to spend money on in 2025.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Rachel Maddow did a segment. The New York Times did a story. So this is, you know, swirling around the internet. Lots of people have takes. Lots of people are weighing in. And then Elon Musk goes on X and basically calls Rachel Maddow a liar. Quote, hey, Maddow, why the lie? And of course, he doesn't back that up with any documentation. So you're seeing all this back and forth.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
So I'm watching all of this unfold, and I go to the State Department's website and find this spreadsheet myself. I download it, and I take a look, and it has been edited. And it's not like, didn't take investigative journalism to figure this out. It's just on the State Department's website.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
I refreshed it, and I saw, oh, the word Tesla has been removed, and now it just says electric vehicle company. And they even wrote the time they edited it, and it was like two minutes before I I had refreshed the page. That's crazy. Yeah. Some people like to say it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. This sure does look like some kind of cover-up, right?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Somebody, after this got tons of attention and was something of a hubbub, took the word Tesla out of this document. And the reporter in me is just like, what is going on? At first, I thought this was really weird. Now I think it's even weirder. And I'm just dying to know what is the real story here. Who did this? Why are they doing this? Who's behind it?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
My spidey sense as a reporter is just off the wall.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
After reports circulated of the lucrative federal contract, the State Department document was edited. The word Tesla was removed. It now says the $400 million purchase is for, quote, armored electric vehicles. Musk has been questioned over conflicts of interest in the White House. Can we slow down on $400 million for Tesla armored vehicles? Like... Does Tesla make armored vehicles? No. Okay.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
They have a Cybertruck, which, and whether or not it's armored or even, you know, bulletproof is very, very questionable. There's this famous incident in 2019 when Elon Musk brought one of his executives on stage to demonstrate to the world how bulletproof it was and threw a metal ball at the window and it cracked.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Like people really, really enjoyed it. Yeah, and it was just like proof of concept. What Elon says is often exaggerated and sometimes just like straight up a lie, right? I mean, it's like what better illustration of that than a quote unquote bulletproof window breaking when you throw a ball at it. Just amazing.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
But yeah, $400 million for armored Teslas, as you mentioned, something that doesn't even exist. And that's like half a billion dollars of taxpayer money. What? What?
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
To give you some perspective of how much money this is, multiple people I talked to as part of this reporting were like, that might be enough money to replace the entire fleet of vehicles that State Department personnel use around the world. There's like 3,000 armored vehicles.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
And if you do the back of the envelope math, this potentially could swap every, say, Mercedes-Benz or BMW that's armored with a Cybertruck.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, when it comes to hypocrisies, people have many examples to point to with Musk and his Doge work, but this is like a shining, fat, glaring one.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
Curtis Yarvin is this software developer dude who has a huge online following. He became like a big figure. I think it's called like the dark enlightenment movement. Yes. And they kind of push for authoritarianism, essentially. And he's often pushed for this like, I think the acronym is like RAGE, like Retire All Government Employees, which is almost like a proto-doge kind of thing.
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DOGE and the Mystery of the State Department Teslas
He's become someone that a lot of Silicon Valley types, libertarian types, anti-government types have rallied around and held up as this kind of like intellectual leader.