Bulwark Takes - Pete Hegseth MELTDOWN

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein break down the chaos surrounding Pete Hegseth, from public meltdowns and troll wars to bizarre tweets and Easter egg rolls. Is Trump’s Secretary of Defense about to get the boot?

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looks one day and that could you know be a stay of execution but uh man a lot of a lot of signs uh that they're looking to make a change uh sam since i guess since we last spoke to i guess bill crystal a couple hours ago we already have a bunch of developments. What has struck you the most as far as the Hegseth drama is going today? Well, let's let's let's set the stage here because it's important. We got to timestamp these things. OK, obviously stuff is fast. We're recording this like 445 on Monday.

So as of now, Hegseth is still dutifully employed as Secretary of Defense. Employed. Carolyn Leavitt, press secretary, says there's no way that these reports that we are looking for a new defense secretary are totally false, she said. Fake news. Fake news. Of course, that was in reference to an NPR report that the administration was indeed looking at replacements. Eric, son of Eric, said that he has heard from White House people that they are, in fact, looking for a replacement. For people that don't know, do you want a credential, Eric, son of Eric, on this point?

Well, I mean, he's a conservative talk radio host. He's a conservative talk radio host. He held the Red State Gathering, which was very prominent for a while of talk and he would point being that like he talks to people uh and if it's the npr folks brings a little balance to the situation we have a more left-aligned npr wouldn't want to impugn the good people of npr uh you know saying one thing eric erickson saying it means it's coming from a bunch of different coming from different people it's in the ether let's put it that way. Trump was asked about it. He did his Trump

thing where he's like, you know, this is I stand by the guy and all that stuff. And then the weirdest thing, I don't know if you and Bill talked about it, was Hegseth himself at the Easter egg roll. I've not talked about that yet. Yeah. So that was a weird one. We should pull up the video of that really quick, actually. Let's watch. Full of hoaxsters that peddle

anonymous sources from leakers with axes to grind. And then you put it all together as if it's some news story. And when we know it, we know exactly what it is. So I'm really proud of what we're doing for the president, fighting hard across the board. And I'm going to go roll some Easter eggs with my kids. All right. So there's a bunch of kids. I think they might be his kids kind of looking on skeptically as he explains that all of this is just anonymous sources smearing his good name. Left unsaid is that one of those people is not anonymous, is an ally who actually wrote his own op-ed. I just want to be clear. That shit doesn't happen normally where your ally leaves his job and goes to the op-ed a very i just want to be clear that's that shit doesn't happen normally where your ally uh leaves his job it would be like me having been hired by jeb and then two months later

quitting and then going to politico and being like anyone should be president besides jeb i mean like that is the level that we were at like the other was bizarre because he's like i really love p i really think trump's doing a great job. There's a lot of vipers around Pete. He should go. Didn't really make the case. Like whatever the, the point was that things are untenable for exit. Now,

I think I want to say is like, I don't really take these statements from the white house that everything is copacetic and fine. I mean, I take them seriously, but I'm, there's plenty of history of the white house insisting things are fine and nothing's changing only for like things to completely change in 24 hours. We just went through it with the terrorists, but they were like, there was no pause. We were not even considering pause, never will pause these things. And then Trump pauses them. And so that's just,

that's just how it is, um, in Trump world where you just don't know. He might wake up, like you said, he might wake up and see some Fox and Friends segment that says Pete's got to go. And he's like, you know what? Pete's got to go. Yeah. I mean, Trump was on the phone with Reince planning their next golf outing and talking about how he has full confidence in the chief of staff like two minutes before he tweeted that he appreciates Reince's service and fires him. So you do never know. Speaking of the tweets, one other thing I didn't get into with Bill that has been a development here is,

as part of Pete's cope, the Secretary of Defense has been posting through it. That was ridiculous. We can put up on the screen. It's a pretty funny exchange. The DNC, the Democrats put out a tweet talking about how Pete should go, given just the reckless nature of how he's behaved. Pete replies to them like a reply guy underneath the Democrats from his official secretary of defense account being like, you guys only care about

migrant illegals and trannies or something. And then, and then, uh, the DNC replies, which is like, this is what Pete's phone looks like right now. And it's like a blurry image of a phone. They make a little drunk joke. You know, whatever you think about the merits of the troll war, it's kind of like, it's not a great, it's hard to imagine, for example, James Mad Dog Mattis, you know, getting into a troll war or like robert gates you know i was gonna say this reminds me of the time that robert gates decided to go on twitter and just battle with the dnc account over the you know how we treated joe biden now uh for just a small correction it was from pete haggis personal account not the secretary i apologize just want to be we respect facts here we do uh but yeah the

whole thing was bizarre and it was like at an odd hour and that's like what don't you have other shit to do i mean i guess that's you know this is kind of a theme for the trump era is like they're just a lot of people on twitter a lot when they should be doing their normal jobs doesn't give you confidence that he's got things under control that he's responding to the dnc i mean it doesn't yeah and he's fired his chief of staff his deputy chief of staff his top public affairs person has published an op-ed about how he should be fired. And hinted that more is to come. And hinted that more is to come. And Pete, meanwhile, has been like out of the Easter egg roll.

He's like, you know what you need to do? That's another thing. I need to go to the Easter egg roll and reply to Twitter. It was Bob Gates at the Easter egg roll. There's a lot happening in the world. We're in active negotiations with iran uh we're we're doing more bombing of yemen than i think people realize because there's just so much insanity in the news that it's like not giving the coverage that it would have so it's like a more boring presidency uh i guess we're abandoning the ukrainians

potentially according to what what marco said this israel g war, no ceasefire. There's a lot going on. I mean, there's active things happening in multiple theaters. You would think that the Secretary of Defense, particularly one who's learning on the job, would be quite busy meeting with military experts rather than starting text change with his third wife and going to Easter egg rolls and getting in troll fights on the Internet. But maybe that is his job. I was thinking today,

uh, how would Fox news host Pete Hex have, have treated a defense secretary and then a Democrat administration embroiled in this single gate stuff. And it's just so hard to comprehend how quickly he would demand that, not just their resignation, but like probably their court marshalling and things like that. And I was like,

we're so past, uh, well, he doesn't believe in the Jags that. I don't know. It's like, we're so past. Well, he doesn't believe in the Jags, so I don't know about court-martialing. Oh, you're right. Straight to El Salvador. Straight to El Salvador for Lloyd Austin. Yeah, seriously. What are your thoughts on the Democrats here? I mean, should they be just kind of letting this go, right?

This is one of those ones where you let them bury themselves, right? Yeah. I mean, obviously, when the signal stuff comes up you you have to make the point like this is not acceptable and yes you can call for resignation but you know it's like this is this is a quagmire of their own making and you're not your goal is to just get out of the way the signal thing is yeah i agree yeah i totally agree the same thing is so long for people who missed it i interviewed susan rice maybe two weeks ago and it's like we're just going back just to the part of the interview where I asked her about this, because like, it's obviously crazy in its face for like the Secretary of Defense to be texting his wife about like the time that the F-18 is leaving to bomb Yemen. Like, that's crazy. Wait, before, honey, do you need me to pick

something up on the way home for dinner? And by the way, at the quarter, then it's 1842. Oh my God, you're not going to believe the special that Trader Joe's. Here's the exact weapons package we're going to be using.

But in addition to that like listening to susan rice just talking about how like the protocols and the caution which which was i mean it just i mean the whole thing is so stupid the whole in this whole and water emails and all that stuff uh let let me let let's play the lines okay kalshi bet the lines okay oh great they asked the question who will be the first to leave the Trump cabinet? So I'm just trying to think. So if you have Lutnick, Besant, and Hegseth as the main three, I'd say Hegseth probably at this point, a 55% chance to be the first one gone.

Oh my God. 53. Nailed it. Nailed it. All right. Nailed it. Nailed it. Hell yeah.

Oh my God. And then you told me, I would have been wrong with this. I would have guessed then Besant like 30, 20, then 25 for Lutnik. But yeah. They're low. It's 15 for Lutnik, 11 for Besant. 11 for Lutnik. All right.

Okay. Who will leave their role in the Trump administration this year? The three options are Hegseth, Navarro, and Lutnik. So Hegseth, you kind of guessed, it's the same percentage. Yeah. Hegseth first again. Obviously 55. 54. Right there. Now you got Navarro and Lutnik. So Hegseth, you kind of guess, is the same percentage. Yeah, Hegseth first again. Obviously, 55. 54, right there.

Now you've got Navarro. This is where it gets interesting. I would put him last below Lutnik for me. The people of Kalshi might be wrong, but they think that Navarro is second most likely. Yeah, second at 36%. Oh, that's wrong, I think. And Lutnik's at 32.

That's wrong. Navarro is Trumped until he dies. They're going to have to carry him out. They're going to have to carry that man out. He's not going anywhere. Navarro's just going to just embed. He'll hide. He'll find a place to hide.

They'll never find him. All right. That's Guest of the Lines by Koshi. We should get a sponsorship. We really should. If anybody's watching this, it's a sponsor of the Guest of the Lines segment. Let us We should get a sponsorship. We really should. If anybody's watching and wants to sponsor the Guess the Lines segment, let us know. Subscribe to the feed. We'll see you later.