The Daily Blast: Trump Rages Wildly at Hegseth as Leaks Reveal Humiliating New Blunders

I'm your host Greg Sargent. Officials are leaking word that Donald Trump is privately raging at Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth, claiming he's been misled about shortages and munitions that are now apparently limiting his options in Iran. Trump then went out on truth social and exploded in wild fury all over again.

Meanwhile, other leaks indicate that he's feeling very sensitive about his failures on Iran to the point of feeling humiliated.

“The careful reader of these stories will note that the only thing that isn't discussed”

by Trump and his top advisors is whether Trump himself bears any responsibility for what's happening on his watch. And these new follies really expose the perils of personalist rule, the perils of having a government that's geared solely to satisfying the whims and corrupt interests of one man.

So we're talking about all of it with one of our go-to people on Trumpian narcissism, Salons

Amanda Marcott, Amanda, always good to have you on.

Thanks for having me. So the Washington Post reports that it can't David this week, Trump's anger boiled over. He demanded that Heggseth explain these munitions shortages that have now kicked in, Trump vented that he thought it had all been fixed. You know Amanda, this might explain why Trump recently canceled a plan to tack on Iran.

He claimed the cancellation was because of progress and negotiations on the straight of Hormuz, you know, the idea of being that Iran was so terrified of him that there are meekly agreeing to negotiate, so he benevolently called off the strikes.

“It really looks as if the truth is much darker, that Trump doesn't know what the hell's”

going on inside his own government. Whenever Trump says that there's a deal, Eminen, I just tuned it out at this point because

that just has never been true.

All right, but it's clear that he either didn't think through the idea that if you throw a bunch of bombs, that means you have fewer bombs to throw it next time, or he was lied to by his advisors. In either case, it's a good look because in either case, does he show even an ounce of what being a leader is about?

You know, I think you actually get an important point there with this idea about him not understanding that if you use bombs, you have fewer bombs, because he really does believe that he's in a position of limitless strength.

“He thinks America has unlimited power, but by that he actually means he has unlimited”

power because he couldn't possibly be weakened anyway. And so you can really see how he goes from there to not really paying close attention to little details like what the war that he started is doing to our weapons stockpiles. Right. Yeah, he has a very childish vision of what American military might is, which is, you

know, we definitely have a large military, one of the biggest and most expensive in the world, but it's not limitless, and crucially as we found out in Iran, it's not unlimited in its ability to just crush enemies.

There's a reason that we've never had a war with Iran before, and I wish it was just

that everyone was more peaceful, but it's also that military experts recognize that just throwing bombs at a situation is not the same thing as fixing it. Well, there's another funny detail on the post story. It says this quote, "Hexeth defended himself and blamed his deputy for the shortages and for not ensuring Trump was fully apprised of the issue."

I'm in to "Hexeth has to blame someone below him for the fact that Trump was not on top of the situation enough to know what the hell was happening. At no point can anyone say, why doesn't the President of the United States know what his own war is doing to our ammunition stockpiles? What do you think of that?

Ha ha. This is something that I find super fascinating, and the examples are endless, it's the paradox of MAGA, right? Which is on one hand, they all worship Donald Trump as this almighty leader who knows everything and can do everything and is the greatest leader of all time and blah, blah, blah.

Also, he can't ever be expected to know anything, be responsible for anything, etc. Like he's blameless in all ways, he is like a baby. Yeah.

Well, Trump goes out, and he erupts on truth social overall this reporting. He says, quote, "The fake news is spreading false and completely unfounded rumors. Their fake reporting is treasonous." Trump also says the U.S. has massive amounts of munitions whereas all the reporting indicates shortages and Trump even claims the leakers are now being hunted.

Amanda, I just think it's funny how Trump's child-brain associates small munitions piles with a weak presidency, so he knows he must instantly say our munitions stockpiles are very, very big, which he thinks will show that he's very, very strong. And also, when he says that the reporting is treasonous, like he really means that anyone

“who dares to humiliate him is committing treason, isn't that what he really means?”

Yeah, because he wants to believe he is the state, he's said as much in many ways, right? And so he's often conflated insults to himself with crimes or treason or betrayal and unpatriotism, et cetera, et cetera. And it's kind of, in a lot of ways, he's just the most predictable person in the world.

What is always continuingly amazing to me is all the people that elect to be in his pathway

because you could just say, no, you don't have to work for the man. I think what it goes to is the core of what's happening with maga in a broader sense right now. A lot of these people, I think, saw Trump win a second term and thought that something very big and decisive had happened in the world, right, that he had essentially ushered in

“some sort of permanent and deep and important shift in American culture that maga was the way”

of the future, that America was becoming, you know, whatever maga envisions America being, and that being around Trump sort of guaranteed them, I guess a high position in the hierarchy of maga, right? The firmament of maga going forward, not coincidentally, because he is such a weak and pathetic figure, all of that turns out to have been a ridiculous overreed and now they're all like those cartoon characters who run out, you know, off of a cliff and then look down

and realize there's nothing under them anymore. Yeah, so I recently covered this writing about Mark Wayne Mullin, but there's been a lot of political science research that points to why there's so many mediocre and incompetent people in authoritarian regimes, and it is because they're the kind of people that can't get this job in any other way, right? Donald Trump only values loyalty

in the willingness to flatter him, and so a lot of people who were never, I mean, an in no planet

would Pete Higgs said, the defense secretary for a competent president, like the man was a weakened Fox News house. He's never been a high-ranking military official at all, he knows nothing, but because he knows how to flatter Trump and it's kind of his only skill, he's got this high-ranking position that no other universally we ever have, and you just can go down the list, you know, Pam, Pam Bonnie, like, was probably one of the more competent people, but even she was never

going to be attorney general. Cash, Patel, I mean, come on. And Mark Wayne Mullin, I mean, the guy, like, pretends he was a USC fighter, there's no other universe that these people would have these jobs, and so I think they convince themselves that magas here to stay because the alternative, looking in the mirror and realizing they're taking this job because they know this is their

“only pathway to success is kind of a really painful admission, right? They all mean therapy,”

lots and lots of therapy. What is the political science say about this and authoritarian regimes? I'm definitely interested in that. Yeah, so I've got this. It was covered in May in the New York Times, and it was data drawing on an extraordinary data set I'm quoting from Argentina's dirty war in the 1970s and '80s suggests that there's a lot of incentive for lower and mid-level officials to violate professional obligations, fundamental norms, and even in basic morality.

And like TLDR, the people that are willing to do the bad things are often people that

recognize they were never going to get a promotion otherwise, whereas people who were promoted on their

own merit are the kind of people who say, no, I'm not going to break the law, no, I'm not going

ranks of the Trump administration, which is a lot of people who are competent and they're only

“pathway to success is through slavish devotion to this moron. And there was no other way for them to”

get there, so they're willing to make those compromises. If you're enjoying this episode and want to get even more out of the DSR network, you need to check out our sub-stack. The DSR network, sub-stack, is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio, the DSR daily, where it's matter, need to know, sila consciousness, AI, energy, and climate, and the daily blast. Sign up to get notified every time a new episode drops and stay up to date on the latest

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“DSR network.substack.com/ogist26. It's almost like there's a contract or a deal of sorts, right?”

Donald Trump knows that he can get certain types of people to relentlessly do his bidding once he kind of co-ops them into his cult. So he picks them because he recognizes in them a certain weakness of character and willingness to do whatever it takes to kind of be in the chosen

charm circle. He's really kind of very canny at that. Let's give him some credit here, right?

This is something Donald Trump is good at. He is perceptive about people almost in an animal like way, isn't he? Yeah, probably because he recognizes himself in this, right? He is the person who is incompetent and has only ever succeeded in life because he was willing to break rules, lie, cheat, use deception because he knows that he can't actually succeed on his merits.

“And so I think he recognizes that in other people. I do want to fight though. I think we're”

actually more than we were like a year ago or even more. We aren't a much better position when it comes to these folks because I think that to your point they realize there's no ground underneath them and we're starting to see a lot more Trump officials wonder if they if it's worth it. Like if they're going to face consequences for doing illegal criminal or otherwise terrible acts for him. Genie Perobine a really good example. I mean at the end of the day,

she was unwilling to falsify evidence and purge herself in front of a federal judge just to please the boss because she knows that this isn't going to last forever and she's worried about prison or disbarment. Well on that score the Atlantic reports on more leaks from inside this time on Trump sense of humiliation according to these sources one reason he's been raging so violently over the reflecting pool fiasco is precisely that the Iran debacle has been going so badly for

him and he feels humiliated according to this report. And so you got to wonder the people who are inside and around him all the time this almost gets at the paradox of maga they are supposed to treat him and do I guess on some level see him as this real tribute of the people this world historical figure who has done to liberal America what nobody else could ever do no one else would have dared do it right and he crush liberal America the way he has and yet they're seeing him pathetically rage and wine

right in front of them about things like the reflecting pool and and you know making stuff off about the munitions and refusing to take responsibility for everything how do you think they square that in their own heads. I think a lot of them really have have decided that Trump has this kind of genius this reality TV show thing that he's got going on where he's able to project this might empower and brilliance and all these other things by using the trappings of it in the way that

he was able to do so on the apprentice and other things like that. I mean he's he is very good at using imagery to create the illusion of things that aren't there and reflecting pools are really good example of where that fixation goes because his view was I can fail as a president but if the

lives right it's just I mean in a lot of ways it's not the most brilliant insight in the world I mean

I'll probably all authoritarian propaganda sort of works on this Potemic and Village this ideology

“but I think a lot of the people that have cleaved onto him believe that he is just a master at it”

and so when they see him obsessing over image over image over reality they too are like this is this is the way this is the way because again they also know they're incompetent so they benefit if they can believe that faking it is the same thing is making it. Yeah and I think they look at him as someone who has been able to accomplish something that no other Republican has been able to accomplish right this crushing of liberal America that I'm talking about and and the marshalling of the imagery

fascist imagery is well George Bush had admission accomplished and they had reality is what we say it is and so forth they had the American empire and all that but Trump really has taken the two amorphousistic level and on some very profound level inside these people around him that's the thing that they respect and that's the source of his power over them that he's willing to go full fascist basically. Yeah and your point about triggering the liberals is really really important

here because we cannot underestimate how much these people are motivated by this bitter, sad, angry resentment about liberals that laugh at them and so to your point like the thing about the Bush administration is they really did try to do the propaganda and kind of the old school

style where it looked mighty, it looked amazing in a lot of ways where Trump actually uses like gross

AI art and and USC fights at the the White House and stuff that is sort of designed to be so crass that it will cause proclutching in the brul circles and so it is a little like spitting in the face

“of you know I think in their mind they are the guys in animal house making the Dean look bad right”

to to age myself on my references there. There's really a lot of signs as you point it out that the maga paradox isn't sustaining itself in the minds even of some people around him can you talk about why the maga paradox on some level might be beset by such deep contradictions that it's going to just eventually crack up sort of inevitably at some point. Yeah I think a lot of these people have a lot of practice squaring what is hard for us to square and in part to be very feminist about

it it's patriarchal right male authority flows from God and isn't justified by competence you're supposed to put all your faith and trust in the leader simply because he is your patriarch not

“because he's earned it in some ways so I think that a lot of practice and Donald Trump has taken”

advantage of this right he's a leader so the fact what he says goes and it's not to be questioned and in fact the fact that he's so bad at this is excused away every day but he is the president of a democratic system which is just a different system where there's accountability and I think a lot of us are frustrated because there hasn't been enough accountability and with the immunity he's not going to get enough accountability but at the end of the day the systems depend on some

buy-in from the public and that faith is really being eroded pretty quickly because most people actually they voted they actually feel like they have a role to play in this and they want to see

results from their leaders not just trust me you know on my word and what I say goes and never

question dear leader. I want to close on an optimistic note about that then because I think that a lot of these people around Trump and Trump very much himself and the more feschistic advisors like Stephen Miller really counted on the public being a lot more pliable and I think that the polls actually rattled them very deeply even though they project all this outward confidence that they're made up and all that. The polls really have shaken the kind of the mega paradox to its core

because it shows that that his power is extremely limited right because just to go back to what we were saying before a big source of the power was this idea that he had kind of tapped into some

do before which is march the country into fascism and the the the the vehement of the rejection of all

“that I think shakes up the situation very profoundly and shows I think real democratic resilience as”

well what do you think of all that? Yeah I think that one thing that a lot of these people really did fully believe in their heart of hearts is that the only true persuasion is violence and power and that if you just pound somebody hard enough they will submit. It is interesting because a lot

of them have evidence in their personal lives that that's not true but the faith just never was

wavering and so I do think they had this view that a they'd get in by tricking people into electing them and then once in they could just pound us into submission and as I often say to my friends who roll their eyes at me where Americans get damn it it doesn't work like that you know

“I think I think that this is just generally true of the human condition as people tend to”

resist more than than authoritarian think they will but especially this country with it's a long long tradition of believing of ourselves as a democracy of people who are independent thinkers.

“Well we've gotten very far afield from Donald Trump raging a Pete Hague Seth but I think that's”

really the essence of it. Amanda Markot always a great pleasure to talk to you thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.