Donald Trump Bought a $90,000 Tesla With 37 Recall Notices Against It
https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-bought-a-dollar90000-tesla-with-37-recall-notices-against-it/Open linkView original on lemmy.world573
Comments88https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-bought-a-dollar90000-tesla-with-37-recall-notices-against-it/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
They're shit cars. Let's please stop pretending they aren't. The build quality is abhorrent.
Yes, they had the cool factor for a while, and yes, I feel sorry for (some of) those who got caught up in something they didn't want to be caught up in. But also, the writing has been on the wall a long time, and build quality issues have been public knowledge for about as long.
You get what you pay for.
At $90K, no you most certainly don't.
The majority of the cost is stupid tax
Do you have a source for that?
Also we should note that Tesla paid $0 income tax on $2 billion income in 2024. And Trump axed the tax rebate to help people buy EVs.
Dumb tax as in tax for being dumb. I was joking.
I think "stupid tax" is the more common verbiage, I've updated it
Ah, that makes sense. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Personally I think “idiot tax” works better.
“Stupid” and “dumb” being adjectives that could also be describing the tax itself, rather than the person paying it, is ambiguous. But “idiot tax” clearly says, to me anyway, “a tax on idiots.”
Ah yeah good point
The phrase “idiot tax” is also used to describe people who buy lottery tickets.
I had a coworker who bought a used one five years ago who said it was great having the first owner do all the repairs.
Right, but you gotta admit, older Hondas are made of steel. Figuratively and literally.
Webster's updated "literally". It now includes the definition "to add emphasis", since people keep using it incorrectly. They update the dictionary to reflect current usage, so I get it, but it still makes me sad.
If this sort of thing didn’t happen, you would just have claimed that seeing the dictionary entry makes you not hungry. (Original meaning of sad in Old English, cognate with German satt which still has this meaning.)
There are probably some cases were words changed their meaning from positive to negative. (I know there are in German)
Contronyms are words that hold two opposite meanings
All words are made up.
Mark my words, it's going to happen again with "objectively". I see stuff like this constantly:
That's not what's objectively means?
My buddy found blue painter’s tape where there was supposed to be wire conduit and screws when he lifted up the carpet on his. You may note that blue painter’s tape is intentionally designed to be temporary and dissolve away after a few weeks, which is much less than the expected lifespan of AN ENTIRE FUCKING CAR.
Most likely bought with taxpayer money.
Pay? Why would he pay? Does he ever pay for anything?
I gladly pay you tomorrow for a Tesla today.
Free scrap metal is free scrap metal
Russian taxpayer money, yes.
Now he needs to drive around in it while we all absolutely pray for the funniest thing in the world to happen.
he isn't allowed to
He isn't allowed to drive himself, but maybe FSD is a loophole?
if only it worked
Isnt that a good thing in this case?
If he's not allowed he's not gonna do it.
"But FSD is safer than human drivers!" - Elon Musk
It'll be auctioned off for $10M to an anonymous Saudi buyer.
Honestly, I'm not even mad they're squandering their money on stupid bullshit.
Except it isn't stupid bullshit. They are giving the money to musk so that they can get something they want done. This also gives musk more power as he's able to buy more people.
Anonymously at an auction?
"Anonymously" at an "auction" was the intended implication, I believe. Where in actuality someone is just paid a lot of money in a manner that is harder to trace, and has an air of plausible deniability.
Omg you're right, I completely forgot that was a thing for money laundering. Damn. My mistake!
If this were a movie, (that I was writing) The car would glitch and lock Dumpster inside, then burst into flames. He would push the panic button, then look through the smoky windows at fElon laughing demonically, while Dumpster lights-outs coughing and railing against the betrayal, and injustice of it all.
Fade to black. Cough
Post credits scene will be fElon taking a seat behind the desk in the oval office.
Which suddenly also burst into flames and cut to black almost immediately.
Which fades into POV held tied in a carriage with a blond man telling you you've been trying to cross the borders...
No seriously please get this script hammered out and get an animator
Would be even better if elon were in there with him
$90k is nothing for these people.
You have any clue how much Trump is stealing from tax payers? The dude is making a fortune off being president.
Ever wondered if this tariff yes tariff no spiel is just stock maipulation?
just for a second, now it's canon
That's like an hour of playing gold for him
Like fuck he paid for it
Hearing Trump talk about how the car has 'computer' (during the news conference) made me think back to a news event with George H.W. Bush in a supermarket, seeing a grocery barcode scanner for the first time.
Same kind of inquisitive and excited response from both of them.
ThiscommentislicensedunderCCBY-NC-SA4.0Trump did a supermarket thing while out doing his disinformation circuit, and the owner guy was trying to explain things to him and you could tell Trump had never grocery shopped and then quickly lost interest and tuned the guy completely out.
The McDonald's fries thing was also amusing when he learned "how fries were made" and that they put them in a basket and not scoop them out by hand lol.
Fucker Carlson shopping in Moscow can be put there too since he is another head of the MAGA hydra.
WoW tHeY iNvEnTeD sHoPpInG cArT rEtUrNs
They could have let him learn that the hard way, but no.
You know, Don, when a man potato and a woman potato love each other...
Imagine if everyone in the world would just say "fuck no, I am not cooking for you" and the billionaires would die of starvation because they don't know how to do. Hilarious.
This car was probably bought using US government money.
It was most definitely bought using your tax money.
No it wasn’t. It was Russian tax money.
Putin's manservant bought the car using his hidden slush funds.
I doubt if he paid for it, or if it'll ever be driven.
All good. It can totally drive itself.
Tesla has a chance to do something funny here.
Musk did some crazy brand management with Twitter, but the Tesla/Trump stuff has got to be unparalleled in the history of branding. He built a product that was an identity-broadcasting thing for liberals and then pulled a 180 and drove as hard as one could possibly imagine in the other direction.
Even if he had some idea of selling to conservatives, become the only EV manufacturer selling to that segment, he could have put out a different brand, which lots of manufacturers do, and mitigate losses to the original brand.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sale-big-losses-second-hand-value-plunge-elon-musk-2025-3
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gaining-republicans-loses-traction-democrats-stifel/
Car brand history has a lot in store if youre interested. You can basically start at Volkswagen for the obvious, mitsubishi is a story too, hell even Ford but that has some anachronisms we have to kind of ignore.
At least denazification worked on Henry Ford. Someone showed him footage of the death camps and being confronted with the reality of it gave him a stroke that almost killed him, and which contributed to the cerebral hemorrhage that did kill him.
I don't give a crap how much I'll get for it. I'm ruling out private sale because I don't want to deal with nazis.
I'd rather crush it.
I do have a friend that does EV conversions on cargo vans. Could be useful for that.
Hold on.....this could be a good thing....
Hes not gonna drive it.
And he doesn't even drive....
It's more than that. Legally, he's not even allowed to drive.
Edit: might not be technically illegal, but disallowed by secret service.
I think disallowed only out in the public. I think I read that theyre allowed to drive on the whitehouse property, and maybe private institutions like race tracks? I dont recall the specifics
I think more like the SS advises the president not to drive for their own safety, and to leave it to experts.
Or as Trump probably sees it: The deep state is being insufficiently loyal and trying to tell him - the president - of all people - what to do. So he totally shouldn't listen, and should drive if he wants to, and they should fall in line or be fired.
Proving, once again, what complete fucking idiot he is!
What's weird is that Presidents aren't allowed to drive themselves. Secret service is no doubt impounding that new car until he's no longer their problem.
They can, just not on public roads.
Biden drove an electric Ford truck on a closed lot.
Obama drove Jerry Seinfeld's car on the White House grounds.
He actually said this on camera, that he wouldn't be driving it. But then, he said that he hadn't driven in a "long time"...
I don't think he has a driver's license.
That's code for he never learned to drive. Whatever polite bullshit you're used to from other politicians isn't happening here, so you can safely assume the exact opposite of what he's saying.
He did have a drivers license and was shown driving in 2014 on a video that his wife posted. The license expired in 2020. He probably didn't renew it, since ex-presidents are also not allowed to drive, so he hasn't been allowed to drive since 2016.
It'd be such a shame if it caught fire.
But then, Chump never drives anyway so....
🤷♂️ 🤷♂️
"Bought"
"Donald. I will pay to make you President but you have to give me access to all admin information and buy a car from me." E-Lawn.
Duh. The dude has the intellect of a 90-year-old rotten turd. What the fuck did you expect from him? Are you fucking stupid enough to think he would do any differently than suck Elon’s ball sack on the front lawn of the White House in front of a bunch of cameras?
If you did, I found the Trump voter.
Okay but were they actual recalls or just OTA software update "recalls"
https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/tesla-cybertruck-recalls/
Honestly , I wonder how they got 37 and what they are. My guess is that most were really small software updates like you said. With that said, here is the list of the ones that I heard about. Out of the 6 listed, 5 were exclusive to the truck, and it looks like 5 of the 6 were actual recalls.
I'm not sure how people are ok with that, considering the price and how awful the reviews are about how it's built and drives. For comparison, I have now owned 5 cars in my life and had a total of 3 recalls. The total cost of the 5 cars combined is 26k, and that's over 25 years. My one and only point is I can't believe people are willing to throw 90k at a car full of problems when 90k should be buying you a well-built luxury car with peace of mind.
Will this be the car he now occupies in the motorcade?