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THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

“Full-Blown Meltdown”: Don Jr. and MAGA Rage as GOPers Turn on Hegseth

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4800 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

President Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is imploding again. We just learned that he shared still more highly sensitive data on a private signal chat. A GOP Congressman just basically called for his resignation. And a former chief Pentagon official who is a Trump supporter himself also tore into Hegseth’s tenure, calling it a “full-blown meltdown.” That triggered a furious response from Donald Trump Jr., who declared this turncoat critic “exiled” from the Trump movement. Other MAGA figures raged at Hegseth’s critics as well. We talked to Juliette Kayyem, a former national security official under Barack Obama. She takes us through this latest scandal and explains why the profoundly unfit Hegseth will become a much, much bigger problem for Trump—with no easy way out for the president.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:28.6

.

0:29.6

This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

0:46.5

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

1:00.8

President Trump's Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is imploding again.

1:06.3

New reporting shows he shared more highly sensitive data on a private signal chat.

1:11.6

One report says that the White House has formally started the search for a replacement for Hegset, and a former chief Pentagon official tore into Hegset's tenure, calling it a full-blown

1:18.4

meltdown. That latter development prompted a furious response from Donald Trump, Jr.,

1:24.3

who declared that former chief spokesperson exiled from the Trump movement,

1:29.2

and other MAGA figures raged at HegSeth's opponents as well.

1:33.6

Yet such bullying and threats aren't working.

1:36.0

The first Republican, Congressman Don Bacon, has basically called for Hegset to step down.

1:42.1

We think MAGA isn't thinking this one through. It's plainly obvious that

1:46.9

Hegset is profoundly incompetent and utterly unfit for this job. So go ahead, defend him all you want.

1:53.7

You will only be defending something much worse later. We're gaming all of this out with

1:59.1

Juliet Kayam, a former national security official in the Obama administration,

2:03.7

who's been commenting shrewdly on this whole mess all along.

...

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