Mystery of Trump's vanishing Tesla as his purchase from Elon Musk disappears from outside White House
Hours after Trump introduced the idea that he may move his new car around 'a little bit,' the pricey vehicle had vanished Tuesday from the prime parking spot it had occupied on White House grounds since he purchased it.
A White House official, pressed for details, refused to provide additional information to DailyMail.com on its whereabouts.
'We're not playing Where's Waldo,' said the official. 'If you don't see, it you don't see it.'
Trump himself was coy when a reporter asked him about the electric vehicle Monday after he spent the preceding days warring with Musk by threatening his government contracts, while Trump ally Steve Bannon brought up Musk's alleged drug use and said he should be deported.
The South-Africa born Musk is CEO of Tesla, and also runs X and SpaceX.
Musk published and deleted a post saying the feds had additional information on Trump in the Jeffrey Epstein files and even suggested the president should be impeached. Trump said Musk would face 'serious consequences' if he backed Democrats, although Musk later appeared to be using his X account to try to claw himself back into Trump's good graces.
Amid the threats and counter-threats, reporters wanted to know if Trump would keep the car and maintain the Starlink internet service installed for the White House by Musk's DOGE aides, despite reported warnings by government security professionals.
The Tesla remains a fixation, and there were media reports Trump was considering selling it amid the astonishing breach with his former first buddy.
'No, I haven't heard that. I mean, I may move the Tesla around a little bit, but I don't think we'll be doing that with Starlink. It's a good service,' Trump responded.
Asked where he might put it, he responded, 'I have a lot of locations. I got so many locations that I don't know what to do with them all,' Trump jokes.
The car, which lists for about $80,000, has Florida tags, giving Trump more street parking options if he moves it back to his official domicile at Mar-a-Lago.
He also could store the car at his nearby golf club just across the Potomac River in Sterling, Virginia.
Trump says he paid for it with a check.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and longtime aide Margo Martin took the car for a spin May 30, shortly before the massive public spat between Trump and Musk erupted at the end of Musk's 130-day stint as a Special Government Employee.
The car's disappearance a tangible demonstration of how Trump's relationship has soured with the world's richest man.
Trump took heat in the press for turning the White House grounds into a virtual Tesla showroom at a time when Tesla's stock price was tanking amid fury over DOGE cuts. He called the cars 'beautiful' and gushed about the look of the Cybertruck.
'As soon as I saw it, I said, 'That is the coolest design,' he said.
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