Transcript: Another Fiasco for Trump as His Pick for Pentagon Implodes
Wilson: Correct. That’s exactly right, Greg. He does not believe that he has a fundamental disregard and disrespect for institutional norms and guardrails. All those things we talked about in the first administration where people said, The center will hold, no problem. We all know, at the end of the day, the center did not hold, it was a problem. And none of this is normal or correct or right or, or safe. For a country that faces big and consequential challenges in the world, do you really want to have a guy like Matt Gaetz running the justice department? Do you really want to have a guy like Pete Hegseth at the top of the department of defense? None of it makes any sense. And they know it doesn’t make any sense. They understand that it’s a foolish and pointless joke on the American people.
Sargent: Well, the Post also reports that there’s this internal debate in Trump world over what to do about Hegseth, with Trump supposedly standing behind him for now. There’s also this frustration internally with one source claiming Hegseth hasn’t been properly vetted. There’s no reason Trump had to rush this, but putting aside what appear to be openly destructive intentions toward these institutions, he seems to not think it even matters what emerges about his nominees, as if he’s absolutely certain that he won’t face opposition from anyone in his party at this point, no matter what happens. Can you talk about that? Should we read these latest machinations as a sign that people internally want to take Hegseth out of contention? And is his confidence misplaced? Are Republicans going to tolerate this?
Wilson: Look, Republicans are going to pick their battles here in my view. They’re going to try to find one or two of these people. Maybe it’s Hegseth because he’s a low hanging fruit on this thing, and maybe it’s RFK where they’re going to say, We can’t go this far boss. We love you, but we can’t quite do this much for you. That’s a possibility. I don’t know though—if you end up with Matt Gaetz in the justice department, it has a greater consequential and terrible outcome than if you get your Kristi Noem at DHS. Kristi Noem isn’t great. Nobody’s going to wake up and go, Wow, this was a superb choice. But it’s also not as profoundly threatening and dangerous to the country as Gaetz running the Trump revenge operation at the Department of Justice.
