Has Trump's Pentagon “trial run“ blown up?

This is a Global Player Original Podcast. This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not gonna work with me because we're changing the Defense Department, according to the panegaman.

Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters and anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn't matter. That is an embattled Pete Hegson. The US Defense Secretary, once a Fox News anchor, and some predicting it won't be long before he's sending his CV back to Fox News to see if he can get his old job back. Because as defence secretary, you His days look numbered. Pete Heggseth is blaming journalists.

The Deep State, the Rush investigation of eight years ago, and colleagues who worked with him until they were fired just last week. The person he's not blaming is Pete Heggseth. But is he becoming too much of a problem for Donald Trump? Welcome to the NewsAgency USA. It's John. It's Emily. And the Pete Heggseth story is quite remarkable. Let's face it. When his name was put forward as the nominee to be defence secretary on all this stuff came out about him

and drinking and his behaviour towards women and the fact that he'd never run anything in his life but had been a weekend T V host on Fox News. A lot of people were saying, Is this guy really fit? to run a trillion dollar budget. No, they were saying, is this guy really fit to run a news agent? Yeah, or or or fit to run a welk stall or whatever it happens to be, because he has no background in running anything. I'm boy.

Is it coming home to roots with some of the things that he is doing that are making everybody say, you know, even Republicans, geez, this guy cannot stay in the job much longer. Yeah. Hegsath was at the centre of that row that you'll remember from almost a month ago. involving a signal chat group, which was put together, including a journalist, to describe intensely classified military information about the bombing of Houthis, which he declared had no classified information.

whatsoever. This last week it has been revealed that there was not one signal chat, but there was at least two. On the second one he managed to include his wife, his brother, his lawyer What's wrong with that? And we don't know if that's the end. Every time Pete Hegsuth is asked about this, is asked about the chaos that surrounds him, is asked about this Classified military information which should be nowhere near signal, let alone near his family members.

He just starts berating the media. He is always the victim in this scenario. Yeah, and the other thing that's so interesting uh from that clip we played right on the top of the podcast, at no point does he deny any of it. Look, you've been caught with your hands in the till. You are the dog that has got the chocolate sweets all around you, and the dog's got that face on as if to say I didn't eat any of those. That wasn't me who caused the dog.

This chaos. And I think that is unsustainable. I think there is another important part in all of this, and that is the law of Trump and chaos. Trump can be the author of his own chaos, and of course he is utterly blameless. But he doesn't look kindly on other people creating chaos in his administration. And Heggseth is creating chaos. It also has a side effect which Donald Trump also absolutely detests.

That the focus is on Pete Hegseth, not on Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants to be the centre of attention. Donald Trump wants to have the lights on him, the cameras on him. He doesn't want it on someone else. And at the moment it is on Hegseth. And Trump is having to defend, and of course he is defending until such times as he won't. his position as defence secretary and that is costing Donald Trump. Yeah. It is two thirty six on Wednesday and as of recording he is in a job.

But there are a lot of signals now coming out of the White House and the Pentagon, which suggests that Trump is getting increasingly twitchy or yippy, as he might say, about all this kerfuffle around Hegser. He spoke with Hegseth, we understand, late last night. currently willing to support him, but it sounds like there is speculation about Hegseth's shelf life. And part of it is that Trump and his inner circle are pretty frustrated that they keep having to revisit this

Bad storyline just when they want to kind of get away from it. You know, they thought they'd got through the first round of signal chat. and he stayed in the job and now it's kind of coming back onto Trump's plate again. Now Trump's really busy, you know, he's busy deporting people to El Salvador that shouldn't be deported. He's busy ignoring the Supreme Court. He's busy changing his mind.

on tariffs. He's busy not quite sorting out a solution to Ukraine or Russia. And the thing he doesn't want at the moment is to have people constantly reminding him that he made a really bad choice. in his defence secretary, a man who kind of said to the world, I'm an inappropriate person to lead one of the biggest departments of US government. And what might make some of this turmoil easier to manage in political terms? is if the people that were leaking against Heg

were sort of long standing Pentagon employees feeling disgruntled that their kind of way of life has been threatened by this guy who's coming in to disrupt. No. The people who are causing The shitstorm in the Pentagon are people that Hegseth directly appointed himself. These are his long-standing friends. Longstanding friends who are all and there's no great policy question in any of this.

It's all personality, rival ambition, and the determination to be at the top of the tree and kill anyone who gets anywhere near it. And Hegseth has created this. This is Hegseth's own nightmare. The signal group, no one forced him to set up signal groups with family and friends. No one forced Hegseth to appoint people who were uniquely inappropriate to fill these key roles. and yet that is what has happened in the most powerful armed forces of the world. That

You've got these nuclear weapons. You've got the most sophisticated machinery in the world at your disposal and it's being run by a bunch of clowns right now. I think part of the problem is that Trump doesn't want to be seen to be giving in to pressure from Democrats. He's very conscious that he wants to get through the first hundred days without, as they would say, a scalp. And so they're trying to make the scalp talk go away. In other words, If there's any firing to be done, there's no

It has to be the other side of next Wednesday, which is Trump's hundred days in office. He does not want the story to be, oh, look at all these people who haven't survived even a hundred days of Trump's administration. Because that was In essence, the story of the first Trump administration. When General Michael Flynn, the national security advisor, was gone within a couple of weeks. Right. And you know, that was the kind of set the standard of my God, no one lasts very long.

You know, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, gone and he wants that. So he wants I mean, you know, ar it's arguable what the achievements are of the first hundred days and maybe we should talk about that as well because You know, some would say that the achievements are I mean, there's been a lot of activity, there's been a huge amount of noise, but solid achievements.

Gaza? Not so much. Ukraine? Not so much. The tariffs success of the tariff policy? Not so much. So what Donald Trump wants to be the focus may not be the focus, but you're absolutely right. He doesn't want Forced resignation sackings at this stage. Well after the break, we're gonna be speaking to somebody who knows the White House from the inside. He was Trump's comms director.

In twenty seventeen. He lasted a hundred and three days and also has his stories to tell about the leaks that he encountered in the job. His name is Mike Dubke, and he'll be with us after this. Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopo.

We're joined now by Mike Dove T. who was the White House communications director in Donald Trump's first term for a brief period and a longstanding GOP, Republican Party operative and founding partner of Black Rock Group, a strategic communications company. Uh Mike, it's great to have you with us. That's great to be back. Thank you. Look, you saw some chaos from the first term. We're seeing similar levels of chaos and turbulence right now, particularly with what is happening in the Pentagon.

is the defense secretary. Has he become a liability now for Donald Trump? I think the difficulty I think the difficulty with what's going on in the Pentagon right now is less all of the strum and drong about uh signal gate. And more uh the chaos at the ranks uh underneath Secretary Heggseth that he's lost. He's reassigned his chief of staff. The deputy chief of staff has resigned. Uh, the communications person has left. These are not individuals in the military that.

For whatever reason the Trump administration wanted to push out for DEI or for other reasons to create a more lethal force, which was. what they said when they went in, but it's the people that Heggseth brought in to surround himself with. that are now gone. And that that's the turmoil that I think is infecting the Pentagon. And long term is the turmoil that the White House is gonna have to deal with.

And at this point, we're getting to the area where the president needs to make some hard decisions. The US military is an important cog, obviously, in America's strength abroad. And right now there's chaos at its at its top rank. So that's not sustainable. I can see that Donald Trump won't want to give the media a scalp and give you know, serve Pete Hegh up on a platter. But at the same time if this continues the

It's not sustainable. It's not. And the President doesn't deserve this type of leadership at the Pentagon. He put himself on the line to promote Heg Seth as the Secretary of Defense and Frankly, we were at a time, I have this theory that uh for cabinet secretaries, they need to have a combination of being a good manager as well as a good marketer.

And Heggseth is absolutely a great marketer, but as a manager, he seems to be uh not holding up that end of the bargain, and that's going to create some problems for the White House, and that's not what the president deserves. Isn't there a question though of judgment? You know, this is the person that Trump appointed. Hegseth has surrounded himself by It sounds from reading it, squabbling school kids.

And that's the surprising part for me, frankly, from being within the White House back in the the um Trump's first administration. Is that even if there were individuals that were more, as I put it, marketing than manager for these agencies? We made sure that the undersecretaries were there to basically create a backstop of professional management. I think you see that.

in other agencies where there are undersecretaries who are on the Trump team, of course, but also have some experience in issue areas, whether it be interior or HHS or other places. The Pentagon, for as important as it is.

seems to not have been as well thought out as the other agencies, other cabinet uh level agencies in the administration. Mike, I love how diplomatic you're sounding because The truth is that no one that we're hearing from is at all surprised that this has happened, that Donald Trump has picked. A weekend host from a chat show on Fox.

He's put him into a position which was way above his capability. He isn't able to organize. He isn't able he hasn't ever run anything. He's now got leaking within the ranks, unhappiness, and every time he talks to the camera. Pete Heggs just sounds petulant and whiny and like it's somebody else's fault. And everyone is kind of saying Yep, that's not a big surprise. I mean this was this was a monumental cock-up of an appointment, wasn't it?

I appreciate the fact that you find me diplomatic. And of course, as such, I'm gonna answer the question. No, I don't think it was. I think uh if if um It was a trial run. To reform a agency within the United States government, an incredibly important agency within the uh United States. It's the Department of Defense. Let me finish. You can't have a trial run. Yes, but that had lost its way over the last four years.

When you look back at Afghanistan and the f and the debacle that we had with our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and nobody's head rolled on that. And that was covered up to a great extent. You needed to have a shock. Of a culture change which Hegseth brought to the Pentagon. Now that was also supposed to be coupled with a professionalism. From those beneath him to make the lethal part of the Pentagon, you know, a competent part of the Pentagon. And that hasn't happened.

So I get why he was the choice. I get what the goal was at the start of the Trump administration. And maybe we're looking at three months in. A hundred days in, it's time to move on. That may absolutely be the case, but I'm gonna push back again gently, because I'm diplomatic. I'm gonna push back gently uh to say there was a total and I what was the term you used?

Cock up. Cock up, I think. That is a that's a purely British term. That one I I don't dare say on American television. Yeah. It it means not good. Yeah, oh no, I got I got the meaning. That wasn't it. So Mike, here's the question, right? At the time of the Afghan withdrawal Afghanistan withdrawal, all the blame was laid at Biden's feet, not at the Defence Secretary's feet. Not at Austin's feet, but at Biden's feet. Therefore, if things are going wrong with Hegsuth now

The same should apply. This should be laid at Donald Trump's feet. Not at the Defense Secretary's feet. I mean every everything we've seen with the signal groups, with the chat with the fact that he can't hold his staff, with the fact that they're all presumably I mean, you know what it's like to have people briefing against you, but he hasn't been able to make his mark in a job that is really important to show your authority.

And that then must lie at Donald Trump's feet. I am not gonna disagree with everything that you just said. I will I will say this that Secretary Austin did take some heat from the Afghanistan withdrawal. And more importantly, he took heat on the six days he disappeared when he was having his health issues.

And a part of the reason all of that was laid at Joe Biden's feet, President Biden's feet, was because he did nothing about it. There was inaction. Now, to your point, and I think this is maybe the larger point. At some level, there needs to be accountability with the secretary. And that is absolutely in the president's hands.

So how long it takes for the president to make to take action here, to inject additional people into the Pentagon or to remove the secretary, Donald Trump is now on the clock.

To put it in an American parlance. So would you expect him to be in that job this time next week? Because of the dysfunction that was wrought by the individuals that he brought into the Pentagon, I would say no. I don't expect him. Maybe next week is too soon, but I I think the time, there's just one or two revelations away from us having another change. Now, here's the problem in America with that change. We need to have our cabinet secretaries confirmed by the United States Senate.

That process has really bogged down lately. Um, the uh Senator Thune, the majority leader, was fantastic in getting a lot of the early nominees through. Uh, but to have everything stop when we've got reconciliation, we've got all the other items that need to go in front of the Senate, for that Senate to stop what it's doing in order to confirm a new secretary, because this job is that important.

There are a lot of reverberations here that need to be taken into account that may protect Hegseth from being sacked. Can I ask you to explain reconciliation to our audience? Yes, reconciliation is basically a way in the United States Senate, uh, because of what we have as the filibuster, means that you need to have sixty senators agree to anything in order for debate to continue and for there to be a vote. Reconciliation is a mechanism only on financial issues.

In which a 50 vote majority wins the day, and that bill can then be sent to the House of Representatives. We have fifty-three seats. The GOP, the Republican Party has fifty three seats in the Senate. And even with a couple of defections, whether it be ran Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky or Senator Collins from Maine, it doesn't matter.

Uh, we should have a majority to pass uh tax bills, to pass government spending. All of those are brought together in what Donald Trump has called one big beautiful bill. I'm sure you've heard that term before. And um, that vote will happen, but it can't happen when there are other items on the floor. Unfortunately, the way the rules of the Senate work.

You can only be working on one thing at a time. Mike, the the name you didn't mention when you were talking about senators was that of Lisa Mikowski. You will have heard the clip that has circulated in the last few days. Yes. Where she describes how scared she is right now. We're gonna play it. We are all afraid. I'm uh oftentimes very anxious myself about about using my voice Um because retaliation is real. Not right. Can you respond to that for us? Lisa Mikowski is somebody who has.

tried to hold, I guess, a sense of her own independence, the Alaska Senator, who has sometimes rebelled, who has sometimes found it in her to stand up to Are the administration? She's scared. Well, I I you were speaking with probably the only person in the United States that's worked uh both uh for Lisa Murkowski and for Donald Trump. I was her general consultant on her last two campaigns. So I know Lisa Murkowski incredibly well. Uh, which was part of the reason why I left her out of the

Of my naming of names for reconciliation. I will say this about Lisa Murkowski. She is not scared for herself. personally, she is scared that retribution against the state of Alaska and what she's pushing for the citizens of Alaska in terms of government spending. Programs protecting the number of federal employees in Alaska. Alaska's number three in terms of per capita, the number of federal employees in the state. Uh Lisa Murkowski is a fighter.

Donald Trump is a fighter. I know they both have deep respect for each other because I've been in the room with both of them. But she shouldn't be scared. She shouldn't be scared of speaking her mind, should she? No, she's not. And I think it's it's shown that she did speak her mind. I think it's been misinterpreted that she's physically scared as opposed to

She's scared that she's not gonna be able to be effective for the citizens of Alaska. I've talked to about this before, but you know, knowing Lisa and knowing the fighter that she is, she's not meek. The reason she said these things is because she is a fighter. And uh she wants to protect the her constituents. And Donald Trump likes to portray himself.

As the tough guy, as the guy who brooked no opposition, and yet we have seen in his handling of the economy and tariffs the most extraordinary series of U-turns and flip flops In a way that I don't think we ever saw in the first term. You look you know, right, we're gonna impose a hundred and forty five percent tariffs against China. Oh oh no, we better not. Oh we're gonna do this.

And then y he pulls back because the bond market's gone. And then he says, I want to sack Jerome Powell and then the market falls two and a half percent, four percent and so he says, No, I really don't want Jerome Powell to go. It seems to be making it up.

as he goes along, or am I putting that too starkly and undiplomatically? There I think there are two points I'd like to make here. One, the individuals that the president has surrounded himself in Trump 2.0 differ from Trump 1.0 when the president was just starting out. Trying to figure out how the how the executive

worked in the best way forward. And he brought in a lot of individuals had who had a a lot of different opinions on the economy, on defense, you name it. In Trump two point oh, after having four years of being in office, he knows exactly what he wants to do. He brought in individuals that agree with his

his uh world view and he's proceeding uh forward as such. So I think that's why you're seeing and how is that going? Well well let me let me finish here. That's why I think you're seeing the speed of the of Trump two point oh be so much faster. Than Trump one point oh. The one point I wanna make is that and the one truism In uh this Trump administration is that the decisions

that are made lie with one person, and that is the President of the United States. So you can listen to what Secretary Bissent says. You can listen to what Secretary Ludnik says. But really, at the end of the day, you only need to listen to what President Trump says. And does he change his mind? Yes, he has.

And that's what you're you're seeing that as chaos. I think that is in his mind, again, I'm being diplomatic here, but in his mind, he sees that as the pathway forward because he's a firm believer in terror. Now I'm not. I think that there are I uh you know that tariffs are not, especially at the level that we're at right now.

Is not good for the global economy, but the president does. And the president spoke about tariffs on the campaign trail. And the president is following through. And for the first time in four years, and here's my pure diplomatic

statement for the first time in four years, we actually have a president who's making the decisions, whether we like them or not, rather than a group of advisors around it. Mike, I think you're kidding yourself. When you talk about the president following through, I just ask you a simple question. What's he actually done? What has he actually achieved? He hasn't got any kind of peace deal between Gaza and Israel. He hasn't got any kind of peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

He hasn't really imposed tariffs, he's just put them on and paused them and now doesn't know what to do. He's done the same with China. He hasn't created any trade deals with new countries. We're coming up to a hundred days and it's almost impossible to find one concrete thing that Donald Trump has achieved in power. I will I will um give you a couple from uh the inside. One, it which did collapse, but for a period of time we did have a ceasefire in Gaza. The second on tariffs.

While we've all been discussing the twenty five percent tariffs or the hundred and forty five percent tariffs on China. The tariffs in the United States rose from 2.5% on average to 10%. That has been true for the last 15, uh, maybe three weeks. that we've had ten percent tariff. So

People aren't talking about that, but tariffs have have given rise, you know, from two point five percent to two point. Oh, they are talking about the mic because you've got DHL, you've got a company that says they can't import. Goods of more than eight hundred dollars into the US anymore because the customs backload is so great. I mean that's not a success for your consumers.

Well, what what is a success against China is that we've eliminated the loopholes that allowed Timu and other Chinese brands that would dump products because of direct shipment into the United States. Those those products have stopped ship shipping. Again, I'm defending a policy that I don't necessarily agree with, but I as a pushback to what you're saying, that nothing really got accomplished, there's that. The other the other thing that has been accomplished on the border.

Uh, and this is a whole other area we can dis we can discuss, but the number of crossings at the southern border in the United States has dropped through the floor. It's almost non existent at that point. That's another accomplishment. The move from DEI in United States universities, in government, and in businesses that do work with the government. That those policies have changed. So we have seen he's kidnapping students. He's kidnapping students off campus now. I mean, great.

We've got we've got wholesale changes in a number of areas. I'm just answering your question that nothing he's accomplished nothing and I would I would respectfully disagree with that. Okay. So let me just ask, let me play the part of the polster. You, an ordinary citizen of the United States of America, is the American economy heading in the right direction? At the moment, no. No. It's not. I'll give you I I'll just stop with that.

So then how can you be in praise of the president when you say we're going in the wrong direction? This kind of this golden age that he promised us at the inauguration doesn't feel like it. It doesn't and um I have been diplomatic and I I would say I've been diplomatic rather than praising. What I would counsel if I was still in the White House is that we should be focusing on consumer prices.

We should be consum uh focusing on bringing, uh making sure inflation stays in check, not just is moving in the right direction, but actually stays in check. And uh making sure that what the American people voted for, which was to end some of the disastrous pricing programs of the of the Biden administration where they weren't focused on everyday prices.

And the prom uh the president promised to do that. President Trump promised to do that, focus on those in the campaign. I would love for that to be the hyper focus of this administration rather than terrorists. So to that end, yes, they they can do better. Mike Dubkey, been great to have you on. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. All right, thank you. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitland.

John Sopor. Donald Trump, if he were president. Putin would be sitting in Kiev right now. He talks about oh he can end it on day one. You know what that is? It's about surrender. That was Kamala Harris on Sixty Minutes, which is a weekly Documentary style programme, a bit like Panorama in the UK. She was on just before the election, obviously setting out her pitch about why she should be the president and not Donald Trump. Since when?

Donald Trump has turned this interview into a cause celeb by which he is trying to control CBS because he's alleging That what CBS did with the interview is edit it in a favourable way to Kamala Harris when what CBS did was just Edit an interview, which is the normal production process.

for any interview that is ever done anywhere unless you have given a absolute undertaking that everything that will be said will be as live. In other words, we're just going to put it out exactly as it is recorded. And since when it's become a a kind of real battleground over control of the media and media independence. Yeah, Trump has sued CBS for ten billion dollars and has accused with a B ten billion and accused the programme of unlawful and illegal behaviour. It is not the

new news that Trump is picking fights with the media. He's called them the enemy of the people. Disney agreed to pay fifteen million pounds to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump against ABC News. And I think if you're the journalist or the production team at the centre of something like this You have one response which is

My company's gonna stand up to this. My company will see that this is downright bullying and we wouldn't be journalists if we didn't believe in speaking truth to power and trying to hold on to our spine in troubled times. Last night we saw the executive producer of Sixty Minutes, Bill Owens. saying that he was going to resign because He didn't believe that the program was doing enough to push back on encroachments of his own journalistic independence.

Now, the programme's fifty seven years long and Owens is I think only the third person to run it. He has been there decades. He decided that having defended this show, he said, from every angle, over time, with everything I could, his words, he wanted to step aside. This has caused real disquiet because it isn't the histrionics of somebody who's just kind of flouncing out'cause they didn't get their way.

It is the position of somebody who feels creeping authoritarianism and feels more importantly like their own company is not prepared to back them. And at this stage we should say that CBS hasn't settled. with Trump. But the fact that CBS are in tall is alarming enough for the people who work on sixty minutes. I know someone who was offered a pretty senior job at CBS, has turned it down because worried about editorial independence.

In a memo to staff he said, Over the past months it's become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I've always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for sixty minutes and right for the audience. And he says, It's clear the company Is done with me. And so here you have a situation where the editor of 60 Minutes clearly has no confidence.

that the owners, C B S and the parent company, who are involved in other business deals and therefore want to stay sweet with Donald Trump, they are prepared to sacrifice, it seems, The brand of sixty minutes, built up, as you say, Emily, over fifty seven years, in order to stay in Donald Trump's good graces. Yeah, everything is circular in Trump's America and this dispute comes as paramount as you suggested, is awaiting regulatory approval.

For the merger that they want to make, eight billion dollar merger, with Skydance, which is a Hollywood studio backed by da da da drumroll. a very long term friend of Trump, Larry Ellison. It's run by his son David Ellison. So in essence, I think what journalists are starting to feel is not just the pressure of Trump Journalistically, editorially, but commercially. All their companies have got commercial interests.

in other bigger projects. So nobody wants to step out of line in a way that could be detrimental to their bottom line. And when you think of the history of American media and how there was this kind of firewall huge thick firewall that existed between advertising and editorial and the advertising people can go whistle Dixie because frankly we are not going to surrender. We are independent journalists.

That feels all a lot more fragile now. Yeah, I mean if you look back at the history it's really interesting because America's sort of press independence is not that old. It was seventy two was the first time that the Pentagon Papers came out, that you saw Catherine Graham at the Washington Post, then of course we had

Uh the Watergate. This was the birth of American journalism finding its it's its feet, you know, being prepared to stand up against administrations, be it Nixon, be it Hoover, be it, you know, the head of the FBI, be it all these big authoritarian figures. Who had basically clamped down on what people were able to say. So it it is only about fifty years or so, from nineteen seventy two to twenty twenty five, that American journalism has found its voice, you know, has found its ability to sort of

You know, stop with the deference, take on the big figures, take on that voice that speaks truth to power, and it already feels like those days might possibly be waning. Next week, this time, Trump will have been in office. a hundred days this time round. It is a good point to examine and

analyse really what has been achieved. And you will be So on Saturday we're going to Canada ahead of the general election on Monday, where everything has been turned upside down since Donald Trump became president. The Conservative, who was massively the favourite to win, now looks like he's trailing behind and it's all because

of what Donald Trump is doing in America and what he said about Canada. And on Wednesday, on the hundred days, we're gonna cross the border into the US, into Detroit, where of course the car industry is really We'll see you then.