President Donald Trump on Friday rejected the notion that billionaire Elon Musk should be given access to top-secret U.S. plans for a potential military conflict with China, even as he denied a report that such a briefing had been planned to be held at the Pentagon.

"We don’t want to have a potential war with China, but I can tell you, if we did, we’re very well equipped to handle it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "But I don’t want to show that to anybody, but certainly you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much.”

Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and a part-time government staff member, visited the Pentagon on Friday and met privately with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.