Transcript: Trump Text Fiasco Worsens as Knives Come Out for Hegseth

Sargent: I think that’s a good strategy for Democrats in the midterms. We’re starting to see it, and I expect that once bigger mistakes start coming along, the case will be even easier to make. I want to try to go big picture and get at this. I think what this all shows is that there are limits to a damage control strategy that’s entirely about appealing to the audience of one and nothing else. Hegseth has tried to adopt the familiar never-admit-error posture that everyone around Trump knows he wants. Hegseth lashed out furiously at the media—also something Trump wants. But the facts about Hegseth’s incompetence are so overwhelming that they just render all these defenses ineffective. There’s even a limit on how far it can work with Trump himself. And this is what I want to ask you. Once things start reflecting badly on Trump, which this fiasco really is doing now, that takes precedence over everything. What do you think is going on in Trump’s head right now over this? How much longer can Hegseth last?

Rubin: Well, I bet he is torn. On one hand, he doesn’t want to be seen, as he puts it, giving a hint to the media—in other words, admitting that the media caught them and they did something wrong. On the other hand, you’re exactly right. By keeping him there, Trump’s error is therefore mishandling national security. Oh, how strange it is that the guy who took documents and stuck them in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago would be careless with national security? But be that as it may, at some point he has to decide who he’s going to throw under the bus. And interestingly, he was much more willing to do that in the first term. He threw people under the bus constantly—remember the old adage, I barely knew the guy, he was just delivering coffee. He disowned these people [before]. And now, instead, he’s owning these people, which I don’t think ultimately is going to benefit him.

You raise an interesting point about the old habits of the MAGA folks. First, you deny. Second, you blame the media. Third, you say it’s a witch hunt. We’ve gone through all of these, but there’s a point at which reality does matter. It matters if you’ve lost your job. It matters if the farmer’s crops are not being purchased by USAID. You can’t conceal it all when the effects are patently obvious. When you next go to the car lot and say, Why is this car $6,000 or $7,000 more than it was last week? the car dealer is going to tell you. And another thing that doesn’t lie is the markets. You see the stock market going down, and consumer sentiment is really crashing. Today, you see, again, elevated inflation.