Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melbert. We begin with these very serious questions about whether the

Pentagon, under President Trump's leadership, had officials try to give or actually give

an outside billionaire with a semi-government job, Elon Musk, top secret war plans. This is an explosive

story that has rocked the White House. Royal Washington has our allies on edge and renewed questions about the many conflicts of interest that swirl around Elon Musk, Donald Trump's empowerment of him, and Donald Trump himself. Both men have outside business interests, crypto, Musk is a military contractor. And now we're looking at whether our own state secrets are being basically

leveraged like so many other assets in Elon Musk's efforts to increase his own business power

and what the guardrails are. Musk arrived at the Pentagon this morning. We know that. And there are

important reports from multiple outlets,

including the New York Times, that he was on deck to get a, quote, top secret briefing

on how the United States would potentially wage war on China if it ever came to that.

And the New York Times first broke this story. And I've told you how important journalism is right now with all of the autocratic attacks on the separation of powers and how our government is held accountable.

They had this blockbuster that Musk was going to learn about a plan that could have 20 to 30 slides in it, so an apparent deep amount of detail, which lays out of the

U.S. would fight a war with China. The Wall Street Journal matched that reporting. That's an industry

term, which means basically what was first an exclusive scoop, had a lot of other outlets

chasing and finding similar verification.

Now, President Trump likes to act like he'll do what he wants and doesn't respond to anything.

But in fact, as we've told you, journalism still matters, facts matter, and pressure matters.

He didn't just say Musk can do what he wants.

He said, actually, this wasn't happening, that Musk would not get this top secret China information.

Pentagon and Trump basically trying to push back on the story with those denials, while Musk still

showed up at the Pentagon. And the initial reporting had Pentagon meeting. The Pentagon meeting would

be in the tank, a secure conference room there that's used for high-level meetings of members of the Joint Chiefs. Later today, though, the Times wrote that was

called off after the Times article was published, according to a person who knew about the matter.

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