One of President Donald Trump’s earliest advisors has revealed exactly when Trump grew weary of new pal Elon Musk.
Steve Bannon said that Trump soured on Musk when the Tesla billionaire sought access to secret White House war plan briefings, the Atlantic reported.
Bannon said the tipping point came in late March, when Trump was prevented from showing Musk plans for a hypothetical war against China ahead of a Musk visit to the Pentagon.
“You could feel it,” said Bannon, who has feuded with Musk. “Everything changed. The fever had been broken.”
Trump initially denied that Musk, who has major business dealings with China, had been given a glimpse of the top-secret plans. Critics said that it would have been a conflict of interest for Musk to see the plans.
Musk, who headed up Trump’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency at the time, said he was going to root out the “leakers” who had said he had been given access to the sensitive military plans.
When asked at a press conference about showing Musk the war plans, Trump alluded to the potential conflict of interest, saying, “Certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much, paying a big price for helping us cut costs… but Elon has businesses in China and he would be susceptible to that.”
Trump said that Musk’s Pentagon visit was about finding potential “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The president also indicated that he wanted as few people as possible to see plans for a China war.
“I don’t want to show it to anybody, you’re talking about a potential war with China,” Trump said. “I deal with these people all the time. I don’t want anybody seeing potential war with China.”
While Musk and Bannon have behind the scenes competed for Trump’s attention, the president has indicated he wants to keep both men close to him.