The US government has agreed a $400million deal to buy Tesla Cybertrucks fueling a debate over conflict of interest due to Elon Musk’s close relationship to Donald Trump
A deal has been struck to supply Tesla Cybertruck to the US government (Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Elon Musk is set to sell his armoured Tesla Cybertrucks to the US government in a massive £321 million deal.
The tech billionaire has been vociferous about reducing public spending by cutting workers and bureaucracy. And he has now been criticised over agreeing a lucrative contract to supply the US State department with Tesla vehicles – believed to the armoured Cybertrucks – according to public documents.
Just today Musk outlined what he sees as the priorities of the Trump administration in removing “the roots of the weeds” in his position leading the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, nicknamed DOGE.
Musk was speaking to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “We really have here rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people — democracy,” Musk said, wearing a black T-shirt that read: “Tech Support.” He also joked that he was the “White House’s tech support,” borrowing from his profile on X, which he owns.
Elon Musk has a close relationship with Donald Trump ( Image:
Getty Images) “I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.” But at the same time the State department’s procurement forecast for purchases this year includes the $400million for the Tesla vehicles.
And it comes with Musk already having had many government contracts in recent years with deals worth over £10billion. Most of that money involves SpaceX, the rocket company he founded and is one of the US government’s biggest contractors. There have been claims of a lack of democracy and conflict of interest for Musk who has a powerful role in the Trump administration and yet was not elected. He also spent more than $250million on Trump’s election campaign.
And hitting back at reporters this week who questioned a conflict of interest over a deal with SpaceX he said: “You have to look at the individual contract. First of all, I’m not filing the contract. It’s people at SpaceX. And I like to say if you see any contract where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn’t by far the best value for the taxpayer, let me know, because every one of them was.”
But Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar responded: “So let me get this straight, he wants contracts for cancer research cancelled but says let keep contracts for his company Spacex to do research. Greedy billionaire trying to ripoff the American people pretending to be altruistic is all I see.”