Bulwark Takes - Trump Fires Adviser Mike Waltz in Wake of Signalgate

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by Sarah Longwell and Will Sommer to break down a stunning development inside Trump’s national security team: National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is out—after accidentally including Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg on a Signal thread discussing classified information.

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Editor at The Borg. I'm joined by Sarah Longwell and Will Sommer. We are here to give you some breaking news. Mike Walls, National Security Advisor for President Trump, is on the outs. He's leaving. Multiple outlets are reporting this morning. Kudos to Jennifer Jacobs at CBS, who was the first to get it, but now Fox and Politico,

both reporting that Mike Walz is out, as well as his deputy, Alex Wong. The reason is Trump kind of lost confidence in the guy. I suppose that happens when you accidentally include the editor of The Atlantic on a single chain, and then you discuss incredibly sensitive incredibly sensitive classified information on the single chain. Kind of a big fuck up. But then again, there are a lot of people who fucked up on that single chain. So, Sarah, what is your immediate take on this? Yeah.

So the biggest thing is that Walls is the one taking the fall, not Hegseth, because Hegseth is the one who shared all the classified information. Now, it is true. Walls is the one, and this was always going to be the Cardinal sin. The Cardinal sin was having Jeffrey Goldberg's information in his phone to begin with, and then boomering it really hard and like accidentally just dropping him in instead of,

cause he's saved. He's, and it's funny. His explanation of this is just, we can all empathize. we can all empathize. We can all empathize. He saves Jeffrey Goldberg's name under somebody else. His information or someone else's name.

That wasn't the explanation though. It was like I had it and they got like kind of transposed into my contacts. He means he saved Jeffrey Goldberg's number under the other guy's name. No, there was an explanation where he emailed Jeffrey Goldberg. Tell Sam I'm right. name. No, there was an explanation where he had emailed Jeffrey Goldberg.

Yeah, I'm going to be the tiebreaker here. It was basically that Mike Waltz's deputy had sent him Jeffrey Goldberg's info at one point long ago, and then Apple did that auto-save thing. So yeah, basically it was saved under the wrong number. But not by... Well, whatever.

It doesn't matter. The bigger point is Sarah's right. The sin here is not that you shared classified information. It's that you had Jeffrey Goldberg's number because you can – Trump will spin the classified information stuff. He'll say, well, we kicked the crap out of the hooties. But he won't spin – Trump's also not known for his classified information being something he treats with great care. No, it's not top of his list, although he'll politicize it. But yeah, having Jeffrey Goldberg in your phone is the problem, and that was the issue for Walls.

But again, so is Hegsack in the clear? I don't know. I mean, I guess. Probably. Probably. I think here's the thing about Walls. Walls. Well, I remember when Mike Walls was originally picked and I was like, well, that's one of the only semi normal people that Donald Trump has picked for this whole thing. So, of course, he's got to be the first to go. Now, he is clearly wildly irresponsible. Like this chain was just one. He set up the, there was a ton of reporting around

the time, like 20 signal chains that this guy had set up. So he was just, they're just, they're texting all the things and who knows what other, I mean, presumably the other chains didn't accidentally include, uh, the Atlantic's editor. And so who knows what sensitive information was being discussed there. This guy was, uh, should never, he should he should be fired. I just think it's interesting. It seems like a lot of people should have gone down for this, but it looks like there's going to be one fall guy and it's going to be Walls. Before we move on to Loomer, Laura Loomer's role in all this, let's just talk sort of about Trump and the cabinet and the people around him and how much of a pattern this fits. I mean, obviously,

we all remember the first term. Mike Flynn, I mean, gone within like, what, weeks? It was not even weeks. People who staff Trump inevitably will get burned, right? I mean, I don't want to go full Rick Wilson on this, but you actually see this time and time again, where people think they can live in this orbit and it turns out they can't. To be fair, this one's a little bit, well, not different. I mean, Mike Flynn was also a real screw up. And so, I mean, I think that what's weird about this one, honestly, to me is that he fired somebody at all. I thought he was going to try to gut this one out. It seemed like they weren't going to do anything about it. And so my guess is, is that it's not the sin of being incompetent because they're all incompetent. It's not the sin of, you know, having like set up these signal chains. It sounds like this is an administrative wide, administration wide thing that they're doing. It was, he's no longer

trustworthy, I think, to them because he had Jeffrey Goldberg's number in his phone. And maybe they're mad that, you know, he made the idiotic move. Like, obviously, this is an enormous embarrassment for them. I mean, nothing has made them look more incompetent than this, other than Trump's handling of the economy and deporting people who are here, who are here legally. But, you know, actually, there's a lot of things okay i'm sure i'm sure if we put some thought into it we can come up with four more things well uh looming over this part yes loomer yes loomering all over this is laura lumer who clearly uh

orchestrated prior to this an ouster of uh several top n staffers, and then had her sights set on Alex Wong, who's also a deputy who apparently reportedly is out with Walls. Just talk about the role she plays. And frankly, is she going to be nominated as Mike Wall's replacement? I mean, we have to ask. Well, as we were sitting down to record here, she tweeted about Alex Wong. She tweeted, scalp. So, you know, she's clearly taking credit for it. I mean, this is this is this bizarre world we live in where this kind of right wing activist who a few years ago was sort of like persona

non grata, even in Trump world, now is able to roll up and purge the NSC. So, you know, Alex Wong was her big target. It's interesting well right so there were a couple things he had previously worked for i think like like marco rubio or like like he was previously seen as a more establishment republican was it tom cotton or was it marco rubio one of them tom cotton definitely came out to defend him at some point but basically it was that his wife's father had like some business connections to like a Chinese tech company, which seemed pretty nebulous. I'm sure, obviously, he's been through a background check already if he's the deputy at the National Security Council. And then finally, it was basically that his wife was a former federal prosecutor who prosecuted people on Jan 6th.

And so these are all like pretty, pretty tenuous. But I think a little speculation on my part, I think Loomer was sort of acting on behalf of some other factions within the Trump administration and clearing out a lot of the more traditional Republicans in terms of foreign policy. How much how how serious should we take her influence in this? Quite seriously. I mean, I mean, she managed. She's got a bunch of people fired from the National Security Council, maybe nsa director um you know in addition to all that and his deputy i mean it's it's crazy and she kind of but it's really funny at the same time she's like i can't get into the darn white house press corps i want to go to the influencer briefing so you know it's this weird kind of netherworld she operates that's so funny that that's what she wants because that's where like jack prosbyak and

those other weirdos good thing she gets to go meet directly with Trump. What does she want in the briefing room? She gets to meet with Trump and say, fire this guy. It doesn't get better than that. And look, nobody, she clearly doesn't, she's not trying to have like a soft touch behind the scenes, like tweeting scalp. Like she is eager to show people that her influence matters

and that you do not want the eye of Sauron on her, eye of Sauron on you. It does feel like though, for her, the influence is a means to getting sort of recognition, right? And recognition comes with being at the White House briefing and so on and so forth. Let's go big picture here.

So Walz is out. We don't know who is going to replace him, but frankly, like people who cared about foreign policy and a robust American presence on the global stage, like you said, they thought Walls was actually a semi respectable, decent pick. And it's hard to imagine at this juncture having someone of that ilk replace him. And I think that's cause for some serious concern because you initially had Rubio in walls as sort of one bulwark against the other people who were much more in the retrenchment camp. So how worried should people be? I mean, pretty worried. I think Trump feels like he'll get anybody he wants through. I mean, is Mike Flynn, speaking of Mike Flynn, is he a credible replacement here?

Let me just leave on this picture that popped up in the New York Times of Mike Walz and the rest of the cabinet. It's him opposing for the Times. It's a big takeout on the cabinet officials. And he's giving the finger gun, which I thought was incredible because who poses that way? If you're the national security advisor, who poses that way? You're a serious human being. Don't do finger guns. That's just pretty lame. But it gets to the hubris that these people have.

Especially when you've already screwed up a couple times, right? I mean, that's like, hey, I'm the loose cannon. Oh, man. These people have a lot of hubris, and then it always hits harder when they fall. Sarah, Will, any last thoughts? Yeah. I got to say, this is true of Scott Jennings when I was watching him the other day. This is true of the North Korea style cabinet meeting they had where they all went around the room and praised Trump. This is true of the Mike Walls photo. These people are such dorks.

They're so lame. If they weren't so dangerous, I keep being like, you know, the mendacity coupled with the stupid is a dangerous combination, but every time I see these things, I want to be like, how could these people be causing so much damage? They're such losers. Hey, on that note, thank you guys for joining us hey to the people watching thank you for

watching and subscribe to the feed we really appreciate it we'll talk to you soon