Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Knives Out For Hegseth! Second Signal Chat! Trump Staff Wants Him Gone!

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Tim Miller takes on the latest disaster involving Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Hegseth was caught in another explosive Signal chat scandal—this time sharing sensitive military intel with his Fox News producer wife, personal lawyer, and even his brother. Meanwhile, a blistering Politico op-ed from a former Hegseth ally reveals growing distrust within Trump’s inner circle.

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey y'all, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. The knives are out for Pete Hegseth. There are two bombshell stories out on this Easter evening, targeting the Secretary of Defense, one from the New York Times. Another is an op-ed by a former Hegseth staffer and close confidant in Politico. I want to go over both of them with you. I think the biggest picture here, it shows that there is deep concerns about Hegseth from inside the Trump bubble, from inside the MAGA

house. And the sourcing on these stories, I think, points to people very close to Pete and close to Trump. And they are really trying their best, I think, to get Hegseth removed from Foggy Bottom. I mean, I think that is really the top line here, but let's get into the details. First, for the New York Times, there is another chat. There is another signal chat. Signalgate is not over. This signal chat was started by Pete Hegseth, not by Mike Waltz. It was regarding the same attack in yemen though that was central to that first signal chat that they uh had accidentally put the editor-in-chief of the atlantic jeff goldberg on um in this one pete hegseth started uh a chat uh titled let's pull it up here um defense team huddle you might think on the defense team huddle

you know there would be you know chairman of the joint chiefs of staff let's say head of the air force you know top top military advisors you know it's kind of a need to know thing for people part of the military operations uh you would be wrong if you thought that. The people in the defense team huddle where Pete Hegseth was sharing military operations included his wife, a Fox News producer. She was an underling of his when they had an affair. She's his third wife you might be familiar with. Jennifer is on this chat. In addition to Hegseth's brother, Phil, Phil Hegseth is on the bombing chat. Also, his personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, and some other Hegseth friends and confidants. The chat was started on his personal phone, not the government-issued phone. not government issued phone and it discussed among other things the flight schedules

for the fa18 hornets that were targeting the houthis in yemen as well as the same attack plans that he shared on that other signal chat this again is hard to even really comprehend the idea that the secretary of defense would start a private chat on an unsecured, uh, public app. Well, not a public app, but on an unsecured, on an app that anyone in the public could download. Like this is not, you know, um, I had Susan Rice on a couple weeks ago, who was national security advisor under Obama, and listening to her talk about the precautions that these folks would take, you know, going into secure rooms using secure phones, you know, going into the

situation room, right? Like, I have the idea that this would be on the app signal, which I have on my phone, and that it would include his wife who is a tv producer you know as well as some pr people and his brother phil insane insane but again as it related to the second politico story i think it levels up to the bigger question here which is how did this get leaked who would have leaked this like the types of people that would have known about this chat are on the defense team huddle right so it it's again the the sourcing is coming from inside the house here pete hikes up this had some firings i'm gonna get to that in a second so uh maybe it's some of his staffers who were unhappy about being dismissed. But boy, I mean, unbelievably irresponsible,

unbelievably hackish, exactly what you thought you would get when you did it, put a weekend Fox & Friends host who had a long history of reckless personal behavior in charge of the biggest bureaucracy in the world, in charge of the American military. You knew it would be ugly, but this is comically ugly. This takes us to the Politico story. And I just want to set the table here. What is as important here is who wrote this as the details in the story. The author is a guy named John Olyot.

Olyot has been a longtime advisor to Donald Trump and a longtime friend of Pete Hegseth. He worked for Trump all the way back to 2016. So this is not one of these deep state staffers that like happened to be at the pentagon uh that is now uh blowing the whistle uh this is somebody that has been around for a while also worth noting this is not somebody that was part of the purge i mentioned earlier that um hagseth had fired his chief of staff joe casper uh in addition to a couple other people who were said to have leaked, been part of unauthorized leaks to the media, a deputy chief of staff and a senior advisor, maybe one other person. So several people have been fired. And the author of this story,

John Olyot, is not one of those people. So, um, he is a longtime, uh, friend of Hegseth. So, he worked for Trump going back to 2016. He had worked for Hegseth, um, this in, already in this administration. Uh, he, he was, I guess, put in place to kind of set up the public affairs shop and the PR shop at the pentagon um so he was you know in in this administration uh pete hagseth asked olyot uh to take a promotion uh but uh he didn't do it and he explains in this uh politico story why uh he's this, even strong backers of the secretary must admit the last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon and it's becoming a real problem for the administration. He goes into the Signalgate story, which obviously was brushed off on official,

you know, among the official talking points by the trump administration olyak goes into why that is actually extremely serious and the efforts to brush down the rug were unserious um he also says that the crisis communications advice uh trying to spin it that hegseth got was horrible uh you know he said he compares about the worst thing you can compare it to if you're a republican he says it's clintonian um you know, the non-denial denial that he gave. So he rips Hag-Seth both for the recklessness of his behavior on the signal chain, but also the way he handled it from a PR standpoint. He goes on to talk about how his wife, who we've already mentioned, the former Fox News producer, third wife, how she was brought to two

meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed, the former Fox News producer. Third wife, how she was brought to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed, how inappropriate that was. He talks about the top secret briefing that was set up for Elon Musk about China, despite the fact that Elon has extensive business interests in China.

That became a controversy. They added in a line about this New York Times story, which broke this evening, about the second signal chat. And then he writes this ominously. There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger

bombshell stories coming this week. Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately. So, wow. He goes on there to talk about how he's still a supporter of donald trump blah blah and how you know in order to best serve donald trump he needs to move on from pete hagseth it ends like this the president deserves better than the current michigas at the pentagon uh excuse me if i'm not pronouncing pronouncing my uh yiddish correctly there. But given his record of holding prior cabinet leaders accountable, many in the Secretary's own inner circle will

applaud quietly if Trump chooses to get rid of Hegseth. So that's as blunt as it could be. A Hegseth ally, a former top Hegseth staffer who left in his own accord, not somebody who was disgruntled and fired, says that the inner circle will applaud if Trump top allies of Hegseth and Trump on Hegseth because they believe him to be so irresponsible, so erratic, so unprepared for this job that they want Trump to kick him out. That is gobsmacking. We are three months into this administration. We are exactly three months from inauguration day. And Pete Hegseth is not being run out on a rail by the New York Times or the Bulwark or the liberals with TDS. His inner circle is trying to run him out. They believe that he can't do the job. So again, this is something that's very obvious to all of us. Anybody who's watching this would have known that a weekend TV show

anchor was not prepared to run the military, especially one with Pete Hegseth's track record of just being a total disaster in his private life. I don't need to re-go over all the details of his private life, but it is just an utter disaster. All of us have our own issues in our personal life we all try to overcome, but you don't want somebody running the military that has no track record, that doesn't have the resume, that isn't prepared, and also on top of that is a complete disaster in his personal life. So there was nothing when you looked at the Pete Hegseth resume that made you think this person would do a good job running the military. That's it.

It was obvious to us. It wasn't obvious to the Trump team. They stuck with him. They moved on from Gates. They stuck with Hegseth. Republican senators, almost all of them voted for this man talk about the height of irresponsibility john cornyn tom tillis all these assholes voted for this man to be secretary of defense and now after just three months it's his inner circle that's

like this is such a disaster we have to move on like this is such a disaster, we have to move on. Like, this is such a disaster, we need to leak to the New York Times about how big of a disaster he is, in some cases. And in the case of Olyot, I need to put my name on an op-ed in Politico, basically begging President Trump to fire the person that I had worked for. Astonishing, astonishing breaking news, a total dumpster fire at the Pentagon. Much more on this with Bill Kristol on tomorrow's podcast, but wanted to get the breaking news to you all. I'll be back here tomorrow. Please subscribe to the feed. Happy Easter to everybody except Pete Hegseth and Phil, his brother, who for some reason was getting military plans on a private signal chain. We'll be seeing all of you very soon.