Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller: Pete Hegseth is Getting Shredded in Right-Wing Media

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Tim Miller joins MSNBC’s Erielle Reshef to take on right-wing infighting as Trump’s favorite Fox host, Pete Hegseth, gets attacked by his own allies—from Pentagon insiders to the Washington Times. Plus, the fallout from Trump’s shutdown and the East Wing demolition that’s starting to look like another corruption scandal in plain sight. Watch Katy Tur reports on MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-live-katy-tur

Hey, everybody, Tim off from the Bullark. I was on with Ariel Reshef, who's in for Katie Tur, over on MSNBC. I was on for a bunch of segments. So there was a whole cast of characters, former Senator John Tester, Paul Reichoff, Independent Americans, a bunch of us. And we covered a lot of issues. So I want you to stick around. A third segment, we really focus on Pete Hague, Seth, getting in some hot water in MAGA circles. General's speaking out against him and speaking out against some two right-wing outlets,

the Washington Times, so the big takeout story, that should be a red flag. flag for him. So we talked about that in addition to his free speech crackdown. We get into the demolition of the East Wing and I kind of get into my take about how the corruption side of this, I think may end up being the most important political story. Obviously, the actual demolition has more historic and emotional impact. But I think the corruption side of this is something that absolutely has to be focused on. Then the first segment, we do a lot of shutdown talk. Having Tester on was interesting because the frame of this conversation was just about how there's not a lot of political incentive to end the shutdown about regular people are getting the brunt of it. And in Tester's conversation, he was pointing out that there is in Montana programs, you know, energy programs, other public works programs that have government support and then obviously benefits that people are getting, people are losing this in a state.

that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, that voted overwhelmingly to boot him out the last round in the U.S. Senate. And so it's Trump's own voters that are suffering the consequences of this shutdown. And it's real. It's painful. It's lost jobs. It's lost benefits. It's creating financial hardship. And no matter how much Trump wants to try to punish blue cities and get revenge as political foes, this is an area where he can't do that microscopically.

And a lot of people that are in his coalition, his base and that voted for him, are paying a price. Obviously, there's, you get into a huge conversation about this really to the farmers. And Sam and Andrew did a video on that the other day. You should go check out and I'm going to be doing some interviews on this next week. So the shutdown politics are getting a little hinky for Trump. And I don't think that there's really, that it's not getting so hot in the kitchen that he's going to have to fold anytime soon, I don't think. Eventually reality intercedes, I would say. So we will see exactly how and when that turns out much, much more on the shutdown, on the East Wing and on Pete Heggseth, getting brutused by some people inside his own Pentagon and inside his own right-wing movement, all coming up next.

Stick around, subscribe to the feed right here. Appreciate you all. We'll see you soon. Is the shutdown a winner for President Trump and the Republicans, or the longer this drags? on, as Senator Tester mentioned, they're the ones with the power here. It looks bad. Yeah, I mean, look, to Jake's point, I think that the Democrats have done a good job of making this shutdown about the extension of these subsidies, and if people are seeing their health care premiums go up, I think Republicans are probably going to get blamed for

that. To the question of whether this is a political or winner or loser for Trump, this is maybe an unsatisfactory answer for people, but the answer might be basically neither outside of the context of the health care issue. We're a year, we're 13 months away for the next midterm. The way Trump does business, there are going to be a million controversies and scandals between now and then, what the economy looks like next year is going to be a big factor

in how the midterms turn out. I think that this shutdown is likely going to be a distant memory unless we're still shut down by then, which I guess is not a 0% possibility. And so I think that because there are not acute political consequences, for either side right now in the shutdown. I think that explains why this has been, unlike some of the ones we've seen in the past,

where this is, you know, going on, like, kind of indefinitely, and there's not, like, a clear path back to the negotiating table. Traditionally, or at least in modern times, this has been a Democratic president that wants to keep the government open, you know, negotiating with a Republican Congress that wants to cut spending. So there's at least a terms of debate there to work from.

We don't have that here. This president, I don't think, cares that much about whether the government's open or not. And as you mentioned, sees this as a winner. The Democrats have a base that wants them to fight. And so they see this is kind of a winner for them. And American people are suffering. And until that suffering becomes a political problem for one side of the other, I think this is going to go on. You heard Ashley say there, the White House seems to be trying to temper some of the coverage of this and keep it a little bit smaller.

Do you think they care? The White House cares how this looks to the broader American public? I don't think they do around the issue of construction and the East Wing, and I think if you watch, I spend some time watching Fox yesterday, listening to Trump spokespeople, I think they're focused on kind of making fun of people that think this is a big deal, actually, and like saying like, oh, you know, stop your pearl clutching or whatever, you know, this is just Donald Trump trying to modernize the White House and Donald Trump's a builder. I think they're happy to talk about all of that. I think one element that they're probably not that happy to talk about that I think, you know, To me, the more politically potent story here is the corruption side of this. And you have multiple crypto companies, you know, putting in millions and millions of dollars for this ballroom. Trump just today pardoned a crypto executive that had put money into his stable coin called Binance. You have the military industrial complex, Lockheed Martin, all these big companies, all the companies that were the swamp that Trump said he was running against. seems like they've all co-opted him.

Trump is now essentially doing the bidding of what big tech companies, you know, the big military consultant companies are wanting from him. And in exchange, you know, he's getting his fancy ballroom. And I do think that undermines his core appeal as an outsider that was fighting for the Forgotten Man and that was going to shake up D.C. I think people kind of like it when he's putting his finger in the eye of D.C., and there's a little bit of that with the demolition. But I don't think it's as popular when he is, you know,

taking essentially influence payments from the types of moneyed interests that he ran against. Are there cracks seeming to emerge in this support for Heggseth, and how far could that trickle up would the White House at some point say enough is enough? that's a good question i think this is definitely in a weird way this coming out of the washington times um is something that makes uh pete higseth more vulnerable than if it would have come from a mainstream outlet we're in this weird upside down place it's kind of like that movie men and black um where you know you have to read the national inquire to get the real news about the aliens or kind of there now you have to read the far height maga news to know

what people are really thinking inside the white house in a lot of cases and and the fact that that they would speak to an outlet like that to complain means that these are probably people inside the military who are maybe even sympathetic to Trump, but want just more competent leadership and are trying to send a signal to him and a message to him. And we've seen this in the past, there was a similar situation with a Trump appointee

at that time, I think, leaked to Politico. But I think the fact that these complaints are coming from kind of inside the, not just the military, but inside kind of the right-wing ecosystem, means that, you know, it's something that makes him actually vulnerable. Yeah, and we know the president pays attention to news, especially right-wing outlets. The sort of issues that have been cited in the Washington Times or hexat's fixation on facial hair,

press access, is all of this going to play well with the commander-in-chief with the president, who does tend to do his own nitpicking and kind of pick up on the culture wars, or is this going to become a distraction at some point? You know, I think it could be, it could go both ways, but I think it's a really vulnerable moment for Heggseth right now. You know, in the one hand, I think there was a firestorm around him initially that I think that he survived because he basically made the case to the president that like they're coming after me like they're coming after you and we're going to go after the fake news. And so that's why I think that this is interesting. Now that these complaints are not really coming from somebody they can turn into a boogeyman, right? Like this is coming from military leaders.

This is going from a right-wing media outlet. And so, you know, at some point, all of that bad press starts to pile up and Trump doesn't like it. And we've seen this time and again going back to the first term where, you know, he wants to defend his people for a little while against the media. But after a while, you know, it's all about him. And if they're taking on too much water, he starts to look to move on. Tim, what do you make of what some perceive as headsets crackdown at the Pentagon on both the press and now of their communications with Congress? How are lawmakers going to perceive this? Well, I think that, look, you can never make any money betting on Republican lawmakers to speak out about what the administration is doing, but, you know, conceivably the sun is going to annoy them, that they're at least going to complain about behind the scenes to Trump.

I mean, the members of Congress and the members of, you know, both the House and the Senate, who are veterans, who are on the Armed Service Committee, who are on these committees, they expect to have access to the military, they've been around for a while, a lot of them. They have had that access. And the idea that Pete Hankseth, a former weekend talk show co-host, is going to take it away from them, is something that bristles. And so I do think that he's going to get some pushback there. And then on the crackdown, the media, it's just worth saying.

And it is, and it's truly a banana republic situation over at the Pentagon. on to this point. If you look down the list of people at the media, it is no different than, you know, Sputnik or the types of media outlets that would cover the Russian president. And I don't say that with hyperbole or didn't exaggerate metaphor. And it is only foreign outlets, mostly out foreign outlets of countries run by authoritarian, like Turkish media outlets, et cetera, and sites that are so far right that, you know, like you said, even Fox and Washington Times look askance at their willingness to go along with it.