'We don't want to have a potential war with China,' Trump, after Musk's Pentagon meeting

US President Donald Trump dismissed reports that Elon Musk’s March 21 meeting at the Pentagon was about potential war plans with China, insisting it was strictly about cutting costs. “He's a great patriot. He's paying a big price for helping us cut costs. And he's doing a great job. He's finding tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse,” Trump said in the Oval Office, praising Musk’s role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reinforced Trump’s statement, emphasizing that the meeting was focused on government efficiency. “We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about DOGE, to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation. The rest of that reporting was fake. There were no war plans, no Chinese war plans. There were no secret plans,” Hegseth stated.