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

As the scandals around Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth grow and GOP knives come out for him, a sharp observer of the national security bureaucracy explains why President Trump is caught in a brutal bind.

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Donald Trump Jr. in New York City on October 27, 2024

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 Trumpwith no easy way out for the president. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.