President Donald Trump acknowledged on Friday that Tesla billionaire Elon Musk could be “susceptible” to pressure from China when it comes to his businesses.
Trump was taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office when Fox’s Peter Doocy raised a recent New York Times story about Musk potentially being shown U.S. military plans regarding China while at the Pentagon.
“You guys are denying this New York Times report that Elon Musk was going to be shown a 20 to 30-page presentation about a theoretical war plan against China. Why not just show it to Elon?” Doocy asked.
“Because I don’t want to show it to anybody. You know, you’re talking about a potential war with China. Now, I deal with these people all the time, and I’m dealing with Pete [Hegseth], I’m dealing with these gentlemen on numerous different airplane purchases, and I think they’re all going to be great. But I don’t want other people seeing, anybody seeing potential war with China,” Trump replied, adding:
We don’t want to have a potential war with China, but I can tell you, if we did, we’re very well-equipped to handle it. But I don’t want to show that to anybody. But certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much. He’s a great patriot. He’s taking a big price for helping us cut costs, and he’s doing a great job. He’s finding tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse.
But I certainly wouldn’t want, you know, Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that. But it was such a fake story. The New York Times is just as fake as CNN and MSDNC. And anybody who read that story, people laughed at that story. Who would do such a thing? And the first thing I did is I called Susie [Wiles], and I called Pete. I said, is there any truth to that? And they said, it’s ridiculous. No, he’s over there to talk about costs.
In recent months, many Democrats have sounded the alarm on Musk’s potential conflicts of interest regarding China. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) wrote a letter to congressional leadership, arguing, “Given the need for Chinese government approvals for his company’s projects in the country, it is similarly unsurprising, yet concerning, that Musk has ingratiated himself with Chinese Communist Party leadership.”
“In April of this year, for example, Musk met with Chinese premier Li Qiang, who helped rush the construction of Tesla’s Shanghai gigafactory when he was still the secretary of the city’s Communist Party,” DeLauro concluded by noting Musk’s long history of taking U.S. government subsidies to help build his company and personal wealth.
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
