The hosts of one of MSNBC’s The Weekend erupted in peals of laughter after President Donald Trump claimed that Elon Musk wouldn’t even want to attend a briefing about the United States’s potential plans for war with China.
“I was buying your B.S. up until the last part,” former Republican National Committee chair-turned-network mainstay Michael Steele said on Friday as co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend roared with laughter.
“You know damn well that if Elon has access to sensitive Chinese information ... yeah, he’s sitting for that meeting,” the former RNC chair added.
His comments came in response to a clip of President Trump addressing a The New York Times report that Musk would attend a Pentagon meeting in which the plans—which are hypothetical—would be discussed.
“I might add that I think Elon, if they ever wanted to do that, I think Elon wouldn’t do it,” Trump said in the clip. “I think he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t want to put himself in that position.”
Musk has described the report as “maliciously false information” and called to prosecute those who leaked the information.
Earlier in the program, Democrat Rep. Gregory Meeks pointed out that Tesla’s largest manufacturing plant is in China, which “would have given [Musk] an advantage against his competitors” if he were briefed on the plans and constitute “an inherent conflict of interest in that regard.”
He also said that allowing a “non-elected individual” to have access to Pentagon records posed a “serious national security interest” and that Musk should be “banned” from the Department of Defense headquarters.
