More bad news for Elon Musk and Tesla: Nearly every single Cybertruck is being recalled because the large panel near the front of the truck’s body falls off while in motion.
The recall covers 46,000 Cybertrucks on the road, or every car made from November 13, 2023, when the Cybertruck was first released, to February 27.
The panel, known as a cant rail assembly, is attached to the truck with an adhesive that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration describes as susceptible to “environmental embrittlement.”
“If the cant rail stainless steel panel separates from the vehicle while in drive, it could create a road hazard for following motorists and increase their risk of injury or a collision,” Tesla wrote, while also claiming it is “not aware of any collisions, fatalities or injuries that are or may be related to the condition.” Musk’s company says the defect only impacts 1 percent of Cybertrucks.
This comes as Tesla stocks are collapsing, losing half their value in the wake of Musk’s DOGE purges and his Seig heil-ing. There was also an attack in Las Vegas earlier this week that resulted in multiple empty Teslas blowing up. “It’s just fully terrorism at this point,” Musk wrote on X. “This level of violence is insane and deeply wrong. Tesla just makes electric cars and has done nothing to deserve these evil attacks,” he continued, infantilizing his massive company.
This is the eighth Cybertruck recall since the car’s release.
Donald Trump announced a new investment in military aircraft production Friday, revealing that he had contracted Boeing to develop “the world’s first sixth-generation” fighter jet, named the F-47. And he managed to threaten America’s allies in the process.
“It’s something the likes of which nobody has seen before, in terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, in terms of speed to maneuverability to payload,” Trump said during the Oval Office press briefing.
The pseudo-advertisement for the forthcoming fleet followed a tumultuous week for America’s military industrial complex, in which U.S. arms-makers were shut out of the European Union’s $800 billion defense spending plan. It also came after Canada and Portugal revealed they were similarly wobbling on whether to replace their aging air forces with American-made products.
By all means, the reveal of the F-47 needed to go well for America’s stressed defense industry—but Trump couldn’t stop himself from throwing water on the pitch.
“Our allies are calling constantly, they want to buy them all,” Trump continued, before claiming that America’s allies would get “toned-down versions.”
“We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” the president said.
Foreign sales are crucial to the American arms industry, but Trump’s repeated aggression against America’s strongest alliances has made world leaders waver on whether the continued investment is worth it.
The sales pitch from American arms manufacturers simply isn’t as persuasive as it was under previous administrations. For decades, purchasing American fighter jets and weapons came with an added bonus of U.S. protection. But as global leaders have witnessed Trump defy long-standing military treatises and aggress U.S. allies, that promise no longer feels like a guarantee.
Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, his venom toward NATO, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state have all called the reliability of American protection into question.
Elon Musk is paying Wisconsin residents $100 each to sign a petition denouncing “activist” judges, collecting troves of voter data in the final days before a crucial state Supreme Court election.
Donald Trump and the billionaire bureaucrat leading the Department of Government Efficiency have spent the last week railing against one federal judge who dared to question the administration’s deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, who were transported to a prison in El Salvador without due process and in defiance of a federal court order.
Now Musk is attempting to artificially shift public opinion by circulating a petition against “activist” judges and offering compensation in return.
“By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role—interpreting, not legislating,” the petition said, according to Axios.
Musk’s petition comes little over a week before Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, in which Musk has already put a whopping $20 million behind conservative candidate Brad Schimel.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to weigh questions on hot-button issues, including the use of voter drop boxes in elections, abortion access, and redrawing congressional maps. A Republican majority on the court could influence the outcome in any of these cases, which would have national repercussions.
While Musk won’t know how respondents to the petition answer, after they receive their $100 credit, Musk will walk away with their information and be able to contact them again in the future. Like, in the days before the election on April 1.
“No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday.
“Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country! These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings,” he wrote in another post Thursday. He urged judges to stop placing injunctions on his potentially unlawful actions.
Elon Musk, the unelected face of the Department of Government Efficiency, is scheduled to receive a Pentagon briefing Friday on the U.S. military’s plan for a potential war with China, The New York Times reported.
The meeting would be a massive and unprecedented expansion of Musk’s supposedly temporary role in the federal government, and would have handed some of the nation’s top military secrets to a billionaire who has fostered cozy relationships with Chinese officials and holds enormous financial interests across the Pacific.
Donald Trump did not take the news well. In the ensuing hours, the president and his administration vehemently rejected details of the report, revealing that Musk was scheduled to head to the Pentagon while repeatedly denying that China would be a part of the conversation.
“The Fake News is at it again, this time the Failing New York Times,” the president posted on Truth Social late Thursday. “They said, incorrectly, that Elon Musk is going to the Pentagon tomorrow to be briefed on any potential ‘war with China.’ How ridiculous?’ China will not even be mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue!!!”
By the next morning, the explosive story was still at the forefront of Trump’s mind.
“Their FAKE concept for this story is that because Elon does some business in China, that he is very conflicted and would immediately go to top Chinese officials and ‘spill the beans,’” Trump continued in another post.
But Musk does have connections and business interests in China that critics have argued should disqualify him from such a powerful role in Trump’s White House.
Despite declining sales around the globe, Tesla has retained a stronghold on the Chinese market. The company’s Shanghai “gigafactory” is one of its biggest, and singularly accounted for more than half of Tesla’s global sales in 2023. Musk has also developed unusual connections with several Chinese officials and was tasked by Russian President Vladimir Putin to limit his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan “as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
And all of Musk’s goodwill towards China has provided him with a remarkably cushy relationship with the foreign country. In mid-January, Bloomberg and the Journal reported that Chinese officials were reportedly open to selling TikTok to Musk, despite reports from China’s commerce ministry that the country would “firmly oppose” the sale of the massively popular video sharing app.
Musk’s clear dependence on the Chinese market, as well as his willingness to acquiesce to the country’s geopolitical stances regarding Taiwan, has sounded the alarms amongst American critics—on both sides of the aisle.
In a letter to newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in January—before Musk was appointed by Trump as a special government employee—Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden warned that Musk’s business operations in China were a fundamental conflict of interest that should prohibit the billionaire from accessing sensitive data and government secrets.
But none of that mattered to Trump as he ranted about the Times story to his followers. Instead, he spent part of his morning referring to one of the story’s reporters, Maggie Haberman, as “Maggot Hagerman,” while attempting to discredit her via far-right-minded strawman arguments. He also attacked the notion of anonymous sources, a longstanding practice that is protected by the U.S. Constitution, a document that was adopted due to the anonymous efforts of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, who jointly wrote under the pen name “Publius” while publishing the Federalist Papers.
“The Fake News is the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE … And Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” the president posted.
Shortly afterward, a Pentagon spokesman had come out with the department’s own rejection of the Times story, which sourced several unnamed Pentagon officials in its reporting.
“That is completely fake,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Fox News, holding up a printed copy of the article while swearing that the White House is focused on Trump’s “peace through strength” agenda. “This is egregious, this is fake.”
Read more about Trump and Musk:
Donald Trump is threatening to deport U.S. citizens who vandalize Tesla dealerships.
In a post on Truth Social Friday morning, the president took his threats to punish protesters for committing so-called “domestic terrorism” against his billionaire bureaucrat’s electric vehicles to a new level.
“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!” Trump wrote.
Trump’s mention of prisons in El Salvador refers to his $6 million deal with President Nayib Bukele to hold 261 people whom Trump deported last week, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act to declare members of the Tren de Aragua gang an “invading force” in order to suspend their due process. Among those deported were several individuals who advocates claim had been wrongly identified as gang members.
This obviously isn’t the first time Trump has threatened to deport lawful American citizens.
On the campaign trail, Trump used to fling the threat against people who stood against him, such as former special counsel Jack Smith. Smith oversaw two investigations into Trump, one regarding his alleged efforts to overturn the election results in 2020, and another into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Since entering office, Trump’s administration has set to work undermining birthright citizenship, stripping the legal protections of immigrants in the U.S., and detaining academics for using pro-Palestine rhetoric. With these actions, Trump is attempting to widen the circle of who can be deported, and now seems to hope he can extend it to those who … vandalize cars.
Earlier this week, five Teslas were damaged during a fire at a Tesla Collision Center in Las Vegas. Officials said that the word “RESIST” was spray-painted across the facility’s door and that the suspect is believed to have used Molotov cocktails and a firearm. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that in a separate case in Colorado, three suspects charged with allegedly vandalizing a Tesla dealership could face up to 20 years in prison.
In another post on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump claimed that the attacks were being funded by a larger, more nefarious force—something that Musk suggested earlier this week too.
“People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!” Trump wrote.
