Yesterday Drop Site Newspointed out a strange line itemin the State Departments procurement forecast for 2025.
State planned to spend $400 million on Armored Teslas.
This isnt too weird, State buys a lot of vehicles andspends a lot of moneyputting armor on them.
The Tesla Cybertruck taking a beating.© Image via YouTube.
What was weird was that someone edited the spreadsheet so it didnt mention Tesla andthen re-uploaded it.
Rachel Maddow talked about it on MSNBC.
Elon Musk called her a liar and said he didnt know anything about a $400 million Tesla contract.
The story did another round after State tweaked its spreadsheet to remove the mention of Tesla.
The saga of the Armored Teslas is important.
Here are the four conflicting truths.
The first is that State buying $400 million worth of armored Teslas is not strange.
The second is that most of us dont know how to read a federal budgeting document.
The third is that Musk is the richest man on the planet with billions in government contracts.
Lets start with one and two.
States original spreadsheet isnt weird.
Its called a Procurement Forecast and isnt actually its official budget.
This is a planning document the law requires it to publish.
This is money the State thinks it might spend but hasnt committed yet.
It says as much as the top of the webpage where its listed.
Its actual budget is much longer andlives here.
The original line item is for Armored Tesla (Production Units).
Its possible, and even probable, that Tesla wouldnt have done this work.
A small business could pick up that contract, it wont necessarily be Musks company.
The plan would then be to award whoever has the best bid on September 30.
The State Department has an entire division that just deals in armor.
Its called the DSS Defensive Equipment and Armored Vehicle Division (DEAV).
It spends a lot of money buying armored vehicles and paying people to put armor on vehicles.
An RFI is one of the very early stages of a government contract.
This specific RFI asked for companies to tell them how they might armor an electric vehicle.
The State Department told me that only one company responded to its RFI.
However, the solicitation is on hold and there are no current plans to issue it.
The RFI was also issued long before the election took place.
The original spreadsheet also includes lines for Armored EV (NOT SEDANS) and ARMORED BMW.
So it looks like this planning document is in line with other public documents and pretty normal.
Now onto truths three and four.
A search of government databases forSpaceXandTesla Motorsreturns hundreds of contracts worth billions in contracts.
After all this became public, someone edited the spreadsheet to remove mention of Tesla.
According to State, it was fixing a mistake.
It should have been a generic entry electric vehicle manufacturer, a State Department Spokesperson told me.
It reeks of ass-covering.
Hell, it is ass-covering.
Theres going to be a lot of bullshit over the next four years.
Musk and DOGE and Trump are breaking down the federal government and selling it for parts.
They are both going to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers.
Theyve been doing it for years.
Poring over government spreadsheets and getting worked up over phantom distributions to Tesla isnt productive.
Theres plenty of real graft to go around.
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