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Hegseth's drama, Trump's pardoning spree, and Elon Musk is out

Sidebar

The Washington Post

True Crime, News, Politics

4.14.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode, The Washington Post's Libby Casey, Rhonda Colvin and James Hohmann are joined by Pentagon reporter Dan Lamothe to delve inside the ongoing drama in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's inner circle: Who is at odds with whom, and what does it mean for Hegseth's job security.


Then, President Trump has been on a spree of issuing pardons and commutations for convicted felons – many of whom are his supporters. The crew breaks down who got pardons, and why.


Finally, Elon Musk is out of government; did he accomplish what he set out to do, and was it a success?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history.

0:08.5

Make America great victory. How can you be against them?

0:16.5

It is the golden era of pardons in the Trump White House, at least for supporters and donors of President Trump.

0:24.0

Welcome to Sidebar from The Washington Post. I'm Libby Casey here with Ron DeColvin and James Holman,

0:29.3

and our special guest, Dan Lamoth, who covers the military and Pentagon for the Post. Welcome, Dan.

0:35.6

So we're going to talk pardons today, but we're also going to talk

0:39.0

about Dan's reporting on Defense Secretary Pete Hegset and the drama happening under his watch

0:45.3

at the Pentagon. You know, Dan Hegseff has been like the most microscoped member of Trump's

0:52.9

cabinet really so far. And he's yet again under that microscope,

0:59.0

but this time because of some of the dissension and chaos happening under his leadership.

1:04.7

Why are you looking at this story? I thought it was important to kind of dig in. We had a flurry of stories in April that kind of

1:14.6

looked at the resignations, the firings, the number of people who had been kind of pushed out of

1:20.2

the Pentagon on his senior staff. And really, this story started with a question of like,

1:26.9

okay, who's left? Is this working?

1:30.5

Are these people able to get along? Are they, you know, credible and capable people who can do

1:35.9

the jobs they have assigned to them? So kind of just working my way through some of these names.

1:41.1

Some of these individuals have been with them since day one.

1:49.1

Some of these people are people that were kind of in the orbit of the Pentagon, but really have only joined his senior staff in recent weeks.

1:52.1

So you've reported on this fracture within Hegsseth's inner circle that's gotten so bad that

1:57.7

it's even attracting attention at the White House.

1:59.9

Dan, talk to us about some of these factions and who is aligning themselves with other players

2:07.9

in HegSeth's orbit.

...

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