Elon Musk’s Tesla has announced its biggest discount yet on the Cybertruck electric pickup truck, which it now offers zero percent financing on. The announcement was coincidentally timed for the same day that Elon Musk betrayed President Donald Trump.
Electrek reports that Elon Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck was once hotly anticipated by the car market, but has hit a major roadblock in sales, with the company now resorting to unprecedented discounts to stimulate demand. The EV giant has announced that it is offering interest-free loans on the Cybertruck until the end of June, effectively slashing prices by around $10,000 in a bid to clear out unsold inventory.
The Thursday announcement is especially striking because of its timing — the offer came on the same day that Elon Musk publicly lashed out at President Donald Trump, claiming he won Trump the election and even claiming he is a pedophile, which Musk’s own Grok chatbot disputed. Notably, the Cybertruck is the only Tesla EV to find any market with conservatives as it was seen as a status symbol by young influencers. For example, streamer Adin Ross gifted Trump a Cybertruck in August 2024.
The Cybertruck initially garnered over 1 million reservations. However, the production version launched in 2023 at nearly double the promised price and with reduced range specifications, causing demand to plummet. Tesla had ambitiously planned for an annual production capacity of 250,000 to 500,000 Cybertrucks at its Gigafactory Texas, but ended up selling only 40,000 units in the first year. Sales have declined even further in 2025, with inventories piling up. Data indicates the company is selling about 25,000 Cybertrucks a year, far below its estimates.
To address the crisis, Tesla began slowing production earlier this year and offering steeper discounts on its vehicles. The latest zero percent APR financing offer applies to Cybertrucks ordered with the $8,000 Full Self-Driving (FSD) package. This move follows reports that Tesla has largely abandoned plans to deliver its Autopilot feature on the Cybertruck, pushing customers towards the more expensive FSD option.
As Tesla’s fortunes increasingly hinge on the success of its Full Self-Driving program, the progress made by rivals in developing robotaxi technology threatens to erode any remaining advantage. The Cybertruck’s failure to gain traction in the market, coupled with underutilized production capacity at its factories, paints a grim picture for the erstwhile EV pioneer.
Steve Bannon on Friday called for the Trump administration to investigate Elon Musk, whose brewing feud with the president became public Thursday in a series of escalating tit-for-tat social media posts.
Bannon, a former White House chief strategist and an ally of President Trump, told CBS News that he wants the White House and Trump administration to probe alleged drug use by Musk, as well as the South African-native’s immigration status.
“They have to do that. You have to take his security clearance. Investigate drug use and investigate his involvement” with China, Bannon said in a phone interview. “And you have to investigate his status as a citizen.”
Bannon questioned whether Musk’s path to citizenship was handled properly.
“If it turned out he overstayed visas and lied about it, it’s not right. It has to be investigated,” Bannon said.
Musk, the world’s richest man, was at first a powerful voice in the White House, after spending some $277 million in support of Mr. Trump’s election campaign. Mr. Trump lauded the cost-cutting efforts of the Musk-inspired Department of Government Efficiency during a March speech before Congress, but their relationship has since soured.
Bannon now believes DOGE needs greater scrutiny from the administration.
“Did they take data sets to feed into their AI model? This has to be investigated now. He’s an unstable individual. What did DOGE do? What did DOGE find?” Bannon asked, saying it’s a matter of “national security.”
Bannon has criticized Musk for years, claiming to CBS News in March 2023 that Musk was “owned by the Chinese Communist Party.” In January, he called Musk “out of control.”
Bannon said Friday he is in “touch with the White House at many levels.”
His comments came the day after Mr. Trump and Musk’s relationship broke down in a series of dramatic, public outbursts that erupted over Musk’s withering criticisms of Republicans’ tax and budget bill.
The president said Musk “went CRAZY!” and threatened to cancel Musk’s lucrative government contracts. Musk claimed that Mr. Trump could not have won the presidency without him, voiced support for impeachment and claimed the president’s name appeared in files related to the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier who died by suicide in federal custody in 2019 while facing charges of sex trafficking.
Throughout the back and forth, Mr. Trump continued to defend the budget bill Musk opposes.
“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress,” Mr. Trump posted on his social media site.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Migrants placed on a deportation flight originally bound for South Sudan are now being held in a converted shipping container on a U.S. naval base in Djibouti, where the men and their guards are contending with baking hot temperatures, smoke from nearby burn pits and the looming threat of rocket attacks, the Trump administration said.
Officials outlined grim conditions in court documents filed Thursday before a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts to swiftly remove migrants to countries they didn’t come from.
Authorities landed the flight at the base in Djibouti, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from South Sudan, more than two weeks ago after U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston found the Trump administration had violated his order by swiftly sending eight migrants from countries including Cuba and Vietnam to the east African nation.
The judge said that men from other countries must have a real chance to raise fears about dangers they could face in South Sudan.
The men’s lawyers, though, have still not been able to talk to them, said Robyn Barnard, senior director of refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, whose stated mission is to ensure the United States is a global leader on human rights. Barnard spoke Friday at a hearing of Democratic members of Congress and said some family members of the men had been able to talk to them Thursday.
The migrants have been previously convicted of serious crimes in the U.S., and President Donald Trump’s administration has said that it was unable to return them quickly to their home countries. The Justice Department has also appealed to the Supreme Court to immediately intervene and allow swift deportations to third countries to resume.
The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Republican administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. The legal fight became another flashpoint as the administration rails against judges whose rulings have slowed the president’s policies.
The Trump administration said the converted conference room in the shipping container is the only viable place to house the men on the base in Djibouti, where outdoor daily temperatures rise above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), according to the declaration from an ICE official.
Nearby burn pits are used to dispose of trash and human waste, and the smog cloud makes it hard to breathe, sickening both ICE officers guarding the men and the detainees, the documents state. They don’t have access to all the medication they need to protect against infection, and the ICE officers were unable to complete anti-malarial treatment before landing, an ICE official said.
“It is unknown how long the medical supply will last,” Mellissa B. Harper, acting executive deputy associate director of enforcement and removal operations, said in the declaration.
The group also lacks protective gear in case of a rocket attack from terrorist groups in Yemen, a risk outlined by the Department of Defense, the documents state.
Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this story.
Trump and Musk trade barbs as public feud over budget bill turns personal – CBS News
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The relationship between President Trump and Elon Musk broke down in dramatic and public fashion, with the president threatening to cancel Musk’s lucrative government contracts and Musk claiming that Mr. Trump could not have won the presidency without him, fueling a feud that erupted over Musk’s opposition to Republicans’ tax and budget bill. Nancy Cordes has details.
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Thursday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” left-wing political commentator Van Jones said President Donald Trump should “fire, investigate and prosecute” all of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees.
Jones said, “Look, a couple of things. One is, you know, the power that Elon Musk still has is significant. Somebody said Trump has three and a half more years, Elon has 40. He’s a billionaire. He’s got a long-term play.”
Cooper said, “I believe it was Elon Musk who said that.”
Jones said, “Elon’s correct. You good at math? But the other piece of it is those DOGE employees are very dangerous. If Donald Trump is smart, the first thing he’s going to do is fire, investigate and prosecute all of Elon’s people who are all throughout government with their laptops downloading data right now.”
Cooper said, “You think he should prosecute them?”
Jones said, “Listen, I don’t think that what they’re doing is legal,” said Jones. “A lot of them don’t have the proper clearances. And I think that if you investigate, you’ll find they’ve uploaded data into servers that are that are the wrong, the wrong thing to do. So I think there should definitely be an investigation there. If Donald Trump is smart, the leverage that Elon has is he left, his kids didn’t. They’re still in there. So this fight, if it’s going to be a fight that Donald Trump prevails on in the short term, go after DOGE. Long term, he’s got to steal the Republican Party to deal with an Elon Musk that’s promising to spend money now in a decade from now.”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” that “given the current political dynamics within the GOP,” President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill would likely not survive.
Raskin said, “The good news, I would just say is that, 14 million Americans are facing being thrown off of their Medicaid, millions of people are facing being cut off of nutritional assistance, and although that wasn’t enough to stop the Republicans from doing what they were about to do, perhaps this blow up within the Republican Party ranks will make them think twice about doing that, and adding another two and a half or $3 trillion to the national debt that Trump drove up in his last administration.”
He added, “I think dozens of our Republican colleagues are running scared because there’s been such a massive popular reaction against the attempt to dismantle Medicaid and throw people off of their health care and their access to food. Some of them may not want to articulate it that way. They might prefer to talk about deficits or debt, but of course they were willing to vote for it before. But now they’re looking for any excuse to get off the train. I don’t think that this bill can survive, given the current political dynamics within the GOP. It just gives them way too many exit ramps to get off, and they understand the political danger that they’re in. I went to a bunch of Republican districts to do town halls with other Democratic colleagues, and there’s an. absolute fury out there towards Republicans in the swing districts.”
Preview: Kathy Griffin on receiving death threats – CBS News
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In this preview of an interview to be broadcast on “Sunday Morning” March 24, comedian Kathy Griffin explains to Luke Burbank some of the fallout from her 2017 photo shoot in which she was pictured holding a bloody replica of President Donald Trump’s head.
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South Korea elected a leftist president this week with minimal foreign policy experience and a predisposition to seek dialogue with the country’s communist enemies – a prime opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to improve relations with Seoul, potentially at the expense of the United States.
The alliance between President Trump and Elon Musk went up in flames Thursday, days after the world’s richest man left the administration and tried to wield his influence to kill a massive budget bill that is central to enacting the president’s top legislative priorities.
Their spat played out in public and marked another remarkable turn for Musk, who spent tens of millions on Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign and was given the reins to slash the size of the federal government.
Here’s a look back at how Mr. Trump and Musk got here:
Trump “not the right guy,” Musk says in 2016
The Tesla CEO praised Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s economic and environmental policies as “the right ones” in an interview with CNBC before the 2016 election.
“I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy,” Musk said of Mr. Trump at the time. “He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”
“I don’t think this is the finest moment in our democracy,” Musk added.
Musk joins — and quits — Trump administration roles
Shortly after Mr. Trump’s first term began, Musk joined a handful of White House advisory boards, including Mr. Trump’s “manufacturing jobs council.”
But Musk left those roles just months later, citing Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords.
“Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world,” Musk tweeted in June 2017.
Musk continued to have a close relationship with the federal government, however, as his rocket company SpaceX has billions in contracts with NASA and other agencies.
Mr. Trump praised Musk at a 2020 SpaceX launch in Florida, saying at one point: “I speak to him all the time. Great guy. He’s one of our great brains. We like great brains. And Elon has done a fantastic job.”
President Trump talks with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at the White House on Feb. 3, 2017.
Evan Vucci / AP
Musk sours on Democrats in 2022 — but still feuds with Trump
In May 2022, Musk said he was ending his support for Democrats because “they have become the party of division & hate.”
“So I can no longer support them and will vote Republican,” Musk tweeted, later adding that he voted for Clinton in 2016 and former President Joe Biden in 2020.
But just two months later, Musk suggested he didn’t support Mr. Trump launching another run for the White House amid a public spat with the then-former president over the course of several days in July 2022. Mr. Trump called the Tesla CEO a “b—s— artist” at a rally and said his companies would be “worthless” without federal backing, while Musk tweeted Mr. Trump should “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Later in 2022, Musk purchased Twitter, now known as X, and quickly reinstated Mr. Trump’s account, which had been suspended since the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The reinstatement came four days after Mr. Trump announced his third run for the presidency after losing to Biden.
In the Republican presidential primary, Musk initially threw his support behind one of Mr. Trump’s rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In May 2023, the billionaire and the Floridian appeared together on a glitchy Twitter livestream to launch DeSantis’ campaign.
Musk endorses Trump in 2024, wields influence
The tech billionaire formally endorsed Mr. Trump on July 13, 2024, moments after Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk wrote alongside video of the bloodied presidential candidate raising his fist in the air as he was surrounded by Secret Service agents.
Musk joined Mr. Trump on the campaign trail and spent roughly $277 million to help elect him and other Republican candidates, mostly through a Musk-backed super PAC called America PAC, campaign finance records show.
Mr. Trump shouted Musk out during his election night victory speech: “A star is born,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s an amazing guy.”
Before Mr. Trump was inaugurated for a second term, Musk used his political influence in December 2024 to whip up outrage against a bipartisan spending bill and torpedo it days before a potential government shutdown.
Elon Musk jumps on the stage as President Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show on Oct. 5, 2024 in Butler, Pa.
Mr. Trump appointed Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was tasked with cutting federal government spending, but fell far short of Musk’s $1 trillion goal.
Musk quickly became a member of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, participating in Cabinet meetings and traveling on Air Force One with his young son. Less than a month into his government service, Musk professed on X: “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.”
Musk and Mr. Trump appeared together in the Oval Office in February — with Musk’s son in tow — and jointly answered questions from the press.
President Trump listens as Elon Musk, joined by his son X Æ A-Xii, speaks in the Oval Office on Feb. 11.
Alex Brandon / AP
Mr. Trump stood by Musk as some of his efforts drew backlash. In late February, a DOGE-backed email telling federal employees to report what they had accomplished in the preceding week sparked confusion in some agencies. During a Cabinet meeting days later, Mr. Trump called Musk “tremendously successful” and said people were “thrilled” with his performance — and said federal workers who haven’t responded to the emails are “on the bubble.”
When Tesla faced protests from Trump opponents, the president boosted Musk, climbing into a Tesla on the White House South Lawn in March and calling the car “beautiful.” Days prior, Mr. Trump said on Truth Social he would “buy a brand new Tesla” as a show of support for Musk, who the president said was “doing a FANTASTIC JOB.”
President Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to reporters as they sit in a red Model S Tesla vehicle on the South Lawn of the White House on March 11.
/ AP
Musk clashed with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro in April over Mr. Trump’s tariff strategy. Musk called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks” after Navarro said Tesla relies on “cheap foreign parts.” Mr. Trump’s White House didn’t take sides: “Boys will be boys,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
In a late April Cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump praised and thanked Musk — but suggested his time in government could end soon.
“You’re invited to stay as long as you want. At some point, he wants to get back home to his cars,” Mr. Trump said, as he and his Cabinet led a round of applause for the billionaire.
President Trump to @elonmusk: “We just want to thank you very much. And, you know, you’re invited to stay as long as you want. At some point, he wants to get back home to his cars.” pic.twitter.com/izglwMebKM
Days before wrapping up his work for the federal government, Musk began criticizing a massive piece of legislation aimed at advancing Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda. Musk told “CBS News Sunday Morning” he was “disappointed” in the price tag of the package, which would extend Mr. Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts, boost border security spending, impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients and roll back clean energy tax credits.
Musk left his position in the administration on May 30 after reaching the maximum number of days he could serve as a special government employee. Musk, who had a black eye, stood next to Mr. Trump in the Oval Office as the president praised the billionaire’s government work and called him “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced.”
“Elon’s really not leaving. He’s going to be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling,” Mr. Trump said. Musk said he would continue to serve as a “friend and adviser” to the president.
President Trump presents a key to Elon Musk during a news conference in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30.
Evan Vucci / AP
Musk-Trump spat bursts wide open
In the following days, Musk escalated his criticism of the legislation Mr. Trump has dubbed a “big, beautiful bill,” calling it a “disgusting abomination” in a lengthy early June tirade on his social media platform. The insults continued through the week, reaching a climax on June 5 with Mr. Trump threatening to cancel Musk’s lucrative government contracts and Musk claiming that Mr. Trump could not have won the presidency without him.
Musk said he would shut down a SpaceX program that NASA relies on to transport astronauts — before later backtracking — and seemed to endorse an X post calling for Mr. Trump to be impeached. Musk also warned Republican lawmakers: “Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”
During the back-and-forth, Mr. Trump claimed that he asked Musk to leave his administration and upset him with a provision in the budget bill that would end tax credits for electric vehicles.
“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” the president wrote.
Musk then alleged that Mr. Trump’s name appeared in the files related to the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in federal custody in 2019 while facing charges of sex trafficking.
“@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” Musk wrote. “Have a nice day, DJT!”
In response to the spat, Leavitt called it an “unfortunate episode from Elon.”
A red Tesla is parked on West Executive Drive on the White House campus on June 5, 2025 — the same day as Elon Musk and President Trump’s public feud.
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
Breaking down new numbers on immigration arrests under Trump – CBS News
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Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Trump’s second term topped 100,000 this week, as federal agents intensified efforts to detain unauthorized immigrants in courthouses, worksites and communities across the U.S., internal government data obtained by CBS News shows. Camilo Montoya-Galvez breaks it down.
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