Trump Axed Elon Musk’s Secret Pentagon Meeting in Pure Outrage

Donald Trump was apparently mad at Elon Musk for planning to attend a secret briefing on China at the Pentagon last month.

After news of that briefing was reported in The New York Times, Trump angrily canceled it, saying, “What the f**k is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t go,” an unnamed top official told Axios.

The official said that “POTUS still very much loves Elon, but there are some red lines.”

“Elon has a lot of business in China and he has good relations there, and this briefing just wasn’t the right thing,” said the official.

In March, Trump vehemently denied the Times report, calling the publication “Fake News” and saying the story was “completely untrue” in a ranting Truth Social post. At the same time, Musk was also upset, calling the story “pure propaganda” on his X account, and said, “I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT. They will be found.”

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suspended two DOD officials, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, as part of an investigation into who leaked the news of Musk’s briefing, as well as other leaks regarding Panama Canal military plans, Red Sea operations, and intelligence collection in Ukraine.

But the fact that Trump blew up over Musk’s access suggests that there are limits to the tech oligarch and fascism enthusiast’s influence in the White House. There have been reports that Musk will be bowing out of the Trump administration, but Musk has called them “fake news” and his Department of Government Efficiency continues to gut the federal government. Is this the beginning of Trump souring on his wealthy benefactor?

Far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stumbled Tuesday night when faced with tough questions about her allegiance to Donald Trump at a chaotic town hall that led to three arrests. 

Several individuals were removed for disrupting Greene’s town hall at a community center in Acworth, Georgia. 

While Greene railed against undocumented immigrants, one protester started shouting about the Ku Klux Klan, which historically targeted Black Georgians in Greene’s district. 

The protester, as she was escorted out by security, shouted, “You butch body bigot! You butch body bigot!” 

“The protest is outside! Bye, have fun out there,” Greene sneered. 

The protester’s chide echoed that of Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett, who went so far as to trademark her burn against Greene, “bleach blonde bad-built butch body.”

Another protester with a “Jail 4 Insider Traders” banner was also removed by security. Greene disclosed Monday that she had bought between $21,000 and $315,000 in stocks last week in 17 companies including Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, and Palantir, buying into the stock market dip just hours before Trump announced he was partially pausing some of his tariffs. The stock market shot back up as a result.

In total, three people were arrested, including two who engaged in a physical altercation and were tasered by Acworth police, according to NBC News. 

At a closed-door meeting last month, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Representative Richard Hudson, advised his colleagues not to hold town hall meetings at all, after several Republicans came face-to-face with their angry constituents. 

Greene had her own solution: to mock the concerns of constituents. 

She made no attempt to conceal her disdain as she read a question about how she planned to “protect” her constituents in Georgia’s 14th district from the effects of Trump’s tariff polices, the gutting of Social Security and Medicaid, the Department of Government Efficiency’s massive government spending cuts, and a president who ignores the rule of law. 

“He is not well physically or mentally, and he’s making nonsensical orders based on his whim of the day. How are you going to rein him in to protect us?” Greene read.

“Oh, poor Christina. Poor, poor Christina. Well, I’m sure, Christina, you think you’re pretty smart, but the reality is you are being completely brainwashed by whatever source of news you listen to,” she sneered.  

Greene insisted that no one (besides criminals, fraudsters, and undocumented immigrants) had lost their Social Security or benefits and proudly declared that she intended to “stand by” her president. 

In fact, the Trump administration and DOGE are making fast plans to shrink the Social Security Administration, phasing out essential phone services and cutting staff, placing an incredible strain on field offices around the country. Around 2,800 SSA employees have already taken buyouts, according to agency data. And House Republicans all readily approved a budget that would see massive cuts to Medicaid in order to fund an extension on Trump’s 2017 tax plan, lightening the load for the very rich at the expense of the poor. 

Greene continued to openly laugh as she fielded questions submitted by her concerned constituents. 

“Why are you such a coward in the face of an obvious fascist takeover?” Greene read aloud. 

“Ooooh, scary! That’s scary. You know, I’ve yet to see a fascist gathering. That doesn’t exist in the Republican Party. As a matter of fact, President Trump is the most transparent president in history. The man literally talks to the press every single day,” Greene said. 

It’s true that Trump often speaks to the press, but when he does he tends to discuss his fascist plans to exile U.S. citizens to foreign prisons. 

If Kilmar Abrego Garcia successfully returns to the United States, the Department of Justice plans to detain him again and send him to a different country than El Salvador, or get rid of his withholding of removal and send him back to El Salvador.

That’s what the DOJ filed in federal court Tuesday, ahead of a hearing with Judge Paula Xinis where the Trump administration was supposed to provide information on steps it had taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a megaprison known for human rights abuses where he is currently detained.

The DOJ didn’t provide any new information on Abrego Garcia, although the filing did once again repeat the administration’s false assertion, echoed by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, that the building trades worker is actually a member of the violent MS-13 gang and shows how insistent it is that Abrego Garcia can’t stay in the U.S. 

This is despite the fact that the government previously admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported, violating a judge’s 2019 order preventing him from being sent back to El Salvador. In response to a Supreme Court order that Abrego Garcia must be returned, the government has attempted to argue semantics over the high court’s use of the word “facilitate,” claiming that it can’t go any further than taking action domestically. 

In reality, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to ignore the Supreme Court because the president wants to set a precedent that deportations are final. If Abrego Garcia is successfully returned, it’ll give immigrants hope that they can find recourse in the law and lessen their fear, and that isn’t the climate the administration wants. 

Any concession or acknowledgment of the court’s ruling is a win for Trump’s opponents, and the president has a history of blindly refusing to acknowledge that he’s lost. Trump wants to wield absolute power with no checks on his authority, the Constitution be damned.

A top adviser for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was abruptly placed on administrative leave after he was connected to an information leak at the Department of Defense, Reuters reported Tuesday. 

Dan Caldwell was escorted from the Pentagon Tuesday and is being investigated for an “unauthorized disclosure” of classified DOD information, an anonymous U.S. official told Reuters. 

It’s unclear what leaked intelligence Caldwell is being investigated for, but he was wrapped up in last month’s Signalgate scandal, in which members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet discussed U.S. military plans to bomb the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal group chat that also happened to include The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Along with Caldwell, 18 Trump officials were presumed to be part of the chat, including Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and national security adviser Mike Walz. 

The following week, the DOD released a memo requesting an investigation into the “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information.”  

“This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense,” the memo, written by Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, reads. “I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution.”

Caldwell’s investigation “remains ongoing,” the U.S. official told Reuters.

Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Tuesday that leaders from cities and states with sanctuary policies could expect to face prosecution very soon.

A reporter outside of the White House asked Homan whether he believed that the leaders of sanctuary states and cities should be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and possibly go to prison,” alleging that they’d violated law prohibiting U.S. citizens from transporting, smuggling, or harboring undocumented immigrants.

“Absolutely, and hold tight on that one,” Homan replied. “’Cus it’s coming. It’s coming.”

Sanctuary cities and states have policies in place that limit coordination and information sharing with federal immigration authorities about noncitizens. This allows noncitizens to be able to report crimes, acquire homes and jobs, and participate in society without fear of being deported.

ICE officials are still able to arrest undocumented immigrants in places with sanctuary polices, and if undocumented immigrants commit crimes, they are processed by local law enforcement similarly to how anyone else would be.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative, anti-immigrant think tank, has identified 13 so-called sanctuary states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.

Trump repeatedly and vastly overstated the supposed dangers of sanctuary cities as part of his presidential campaign. At a rally in September, he announced his plan to eradicate sanctuary cities from the state of North Carolina, where there are none.

Last week, Trump said that he was working on a plan to withhold all federal funding for any city or state with sanctuary policies.

“No more Sanctuary Cities! They protect the Criminals, not the Victims. They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World. Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist!!!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.