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.”