This is getting decidely strange. It’s common that Karoline Leavitt or even Trump himself will deny something that is widely known and claim it’s “fake” and then two or three days later it comes out that what was touted as fake news is gospel truth. We saw that just this week when Leavitt accused Reuters of improperly reporting that the Justice Department informed European officials that the United States is withdrawing from a multinational group created to investigate leaders responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, including Vladimir Putin. NBC News confirmed that and now it’s common knowledge.
But what you’re about to see gets so much stranger. Both the New York Times and CNN have reported that Elon Musk is off to the Pentagon to discuss a war with China. What war with China? Are we finally selling out Taiwan or what?
Why does he need to know this? https://t.co/ti4a3LHNLn
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 21, 2025
Why indeed does a car and rocket manufacturer need to go to the Pentagon to be briefed on a war with China? That’s oddball question number one. And here is oddball question number two. Trump went straight to social media to deny this story and lividly so — why?
The Fake News is at it again, this time the Failing New York Times. 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…
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) March 21, 2025
The tweet ends, “the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue!!!” This is probably the most blatant battle that Trump has ever gotten into with the media. Leavitt was dead wrong (as usual) when she accused Reuters of making up a story and now a few days later both the New York Times and CNN are being accused of making up another story out of whole cloth.
Does Musk even have a security clearance — and that’s assuming that he’s going? Or, did this story leak out and Trump decided he had to jump right up and quash it for some reason? This is a major expansion of Musk’s power, especially considering his conflicts of interest.
The Pentagon is scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Another official said the briefing will be China focused, without providing additional details. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offered no details.
Providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to President Trump and leader of his effort to slash spending and purge the government of people and policies they oppose.
It would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.
Pentagon war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country were to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed.
The top-secret briefing for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict. It covers the plan beginning with the indications and warning of a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period, that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with knowledge of the plan.
A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment about the purpose of the visit, how it came about, whether Mr. Trump was aware of it, and whether the visit raises questions of conflicts of interest. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump signed a conflicts of interest waiver for Mr. Musk.
But the White House has said that this is all a dirty rotten lie. I don’t believe that it is. I believe that it’s happening but that Trump is livid that word of it got out. And so he has to attack the media outlet. That’s the playbook, attack the outlet.
Watch this blow higher than a kite. Musk has no business being there, there is no evidence of any waiver signed by him and now Trump is hell bent on proving that this isn’t real in the first place. Wow.
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Zoomers, if you have any spare change in the couch cushions, we could use it. We’re in month five of depressed traffic. I have complete faith that traffic will return as people get back in the fight, but when I know not. This isn’t just us, it’s an industry-wide media recession. Thank you. Ursula
All this smoke being blown around the mirrors.
Is it just a smoke screen or is there a fire in there responsible for it?
I think that at this point, Trump is Musk’s patsy. He doesn’t know what the hell is going on or what will go on until someone tells him and then he just says “Okay, sounds good. Let’s go play golf.”
I am through being naive and contemplative! I believe Trump (I used to call him “Sphincter Face” to make myself feel snarkily happy…no more snark or happiness) is stupid about everything that I respect about intelligence in other people, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be an “evil genius!” The term evil genius means he’s at a genius level of the evil he is perpetrating on the US and the world.
The thought that Trump is off cheating at golf while his minions conduct their control-stealing plans is wrong. He has time to play golf because he has put together a group of “only the best” and he can be playing his little game because they are doing exactly what he has told them to do…take over the entire government! Ignore anyone in the Republican Congressional Concentration Camp, which they willingly moved into, unless they are trying to be independent and then bring all the weight of his tyranny on them alone until they re-enter the Camp!
Democrats, even the noisy ones, are completely irrelevant to him! What are they gonna do? Sue him? Some of that is working, but Trump’s plan to militarize his cultists against the Judiciary is also working! John Roberts, Chief Justice of SCOTUS, spoke his weak little statement about obeying court orders yet could not even speak the name of Trump! Roberts did the only job he was supposed to for the regime…he helped declare the power of the Unitary Executive! If Trump has any further need of Roberts, I can’t see it.
Trump has declared this the return to the Golden Age of the Robber Barons and the oligarchs of America heard him loud and clear! I can hear them laughing at our petty little boycotts at Amazon and Walmart, and even our giant boycotts at Tesla, while they are inside the Treasury taking it all!!
Trump is disappearing anyone he wants to and, while there are some legal snags, once the disappeared are gone they are gone for a long time! Disappearing pro-Palestinians has nothing to do with whether they are anti-Semitic. They are merely annoying to the tyrannical plans of Trump and Netanyahu, “The Putin of the Middle East!”
The battle against students and professors is far greater than a few annoyances and disappearances. DEI fights are not just racist and Christian-nationalist, they are part of the war against education and intellect itself.
I could go on about what a giant operation this is. Please understand, I am not recommending we give up and stop fighting. I will fight! I want everyone to fight. I just want us all to be awake to what we are fighting! We need to create new toolboxes! Throw out the old handbooks. When the institutions of democratic government are failing to impress your despot, you have to have a new way forward! Can we find it? We have to!