Fox News host Howard Kurtz expressed concerns about “a major conflict of interest” after reports said that the Pentagon intended to provide billionaire Elon Musk with U.S. war plans against China.
According to The New York Times and other outlets, the Department of Defense was preparing a briefing for Musk but changed course after the intentions were revealed in the press. Musk has significant financial ties to Beijing and the Chinese government.
“Well, when I read it, I didn’t love it, I’ll be honest,” conservative pundit Caroline Downey told Kurtz during a Sunday panel. “But Trump denied, obviously, that Musk ever sat in on those very secretive briefings.”
“He is a high-profile guy, budget cutter-in-chief, and the world’s richest man,” Kurtz noted. “So Trump and Musk going after The New York Times, president saying he doesn’t believe the sources, he doesn’t suggest the sources may be made up.”
“It would be a major conflict of interest if this was true,” the Fox News host added.
Molly Ball of The Wall Street Journal insisted that the reports were accurate.
“And I think the way that you know that the reporting is true is that at the same time as they were attacking the reporting, they quietly changed what they were going to do,” she explained. “And he didn’t end up having this briefing.”
“I think the bigger issue of what, if any, conflicts may be motivating Musk beyond his pure desire to see government get smaller is an important story that the American taxpayer has an obvious interest in,” she added. “And of course, we in the media are going to keep trying to find out as much as we can about that because this administration has not been particularly forthcoming.”
