Dasha Burns
Appearances
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, the typical Trump playbook is do not apologize, deny and go on Fox News. Right. And that's very much what Mike Waltz tried to do. And it's not working as well this time around because this time there are these receipts that the entire world, including Republicans,
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
Senators and members of the House and voters themselves can take a look and can read and can decide for themselves. So behind the scenes, there is a lot of tension and frustration. The frustration with Wallace has been the reticence to accept justice. that he made the mistake of adding the journalist. He has said on Fox News that he's not sure how it happened. He never knew Goldberg.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
He never talked to him. And what I've been hearing from sources in the White House is that that answer actually just opens them up to further investigation. The president is really upset about this. He feels like it was embarrassing. It was an unforced error. And the question now is whether Is someone going to take the blame for this and actually get canned?
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
And right now the top contender is Mike Waltz. But there's a lot of finger pointing behind the scenes going on right now.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
It's a great question. I mean, the point that you're making is something that I've heard from Republicans behind the scenes saying this is why this is so bad. We made such a huge deal out of the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It's likely why she lost the election, at least in part. And here we are trying to defend something that is pretty difficult to defend at this point.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
I think they're trying to take the cue from President Trump, who's out there saying this is no big deal, nothing to see here. But again, we see, right? We could see with our own eyes and it's harming their credibility politically. This is going to be the big test because the thing that I'm hearing is,
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
This was supposed to be the administration 47 versus 45, where there isn't the palace intrigue, there isn't the drama, and there aren't people being fired left, right and center. And so they worry that it would set a bad precedent.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
But there is a lot of talk from some of the serious people in the room, of which there are people like Susie Wiles, that it might get to the point where real consequences need to be seen.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
Well, we just saw this bipartisan request to the DOD IG to investigate the signal shack. That is a really big deal. Seeing senators and members of the House that are very much in MAGA world start to defect a little bit. Those are major fractures when you look at the context.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
So there are a number of goals for this administration that sort of combine into one here. Number one, retribution against liberal institutions. Universities have been criticized by Republicans for quite a long time and then on the campaign trail and during the protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
That is something that Trump really latched onto and exploited in this political way that he's actually quite good at and riling up his base. And now this is a way that he can come down hard on those institutions. And that's something that people in his world and in his base are very much in favor of. And number two, targeting people who weren't born in the United States.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
The numbers of deportations are not as high as they want them to be. This mass deportation operation hasn't really ramped up yet. And so this is a way that they can have the optics of cracking down on immigration without having the big infrastructure that they would need to build, which they are working on, but it's just not going as quickly as they would like.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
Yeah. And in this country, we have laws even for people who came here illegally. And those laws aren't being followed right now, which was why you have so many of these challenges in the courts. The problem is that doesn't move very quickly.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
And this is part of the strategy of this administration is to flood the zone and do all of this so rapidly that the guardrails that would normally be in place just can't keep up. Right.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
Look, there will be plenty of challenges to this, but it's unclear how much of this will actually make it into any sort of law. I mean, I think you're going to need some help from Congress there, too, if he really wants to execute this.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
But this goes back to those campaign trail promises to his base that he is going to prevent elections from being stolen, even though we have no proof of elections being stolen.
Apple News Today
Inside the fallout of a stunning national-security leak
So this is a trend among the executive orders from this administration. Not all of them have actual teeth, but that doesn't mean they're not effective in some way. It is often a message and a signal. And then others at the state level, in Congress, take that and run with it in their own way. So it doesn't have to have the policy teeth necessarily to have a big impact.