Riffing off of comments made by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, the BBC's Katty Kay stated that it appears Donald Trump is setting "traps" for his Cabinet members, allowing him to pin blame on them when his policies crash and burn.
During a discussion on Pete Hegseth deciding unilaterally to stall shipments of weapons to Ukraine, which Trump claimed he knew nothing about –– and which has infuriated members of Congress –– the "Morning Joe" co-host pointed to Trump's comments and noted, "It's very interesting when people listen to what Donald Trump said there. They said, well, that doesn't make any sense, he's just sort of talking in circles."
"It actually, if you sit and actually listen to it, it is, I don't, I wouldn't say that he's setting a trap for Hegseth, but he's making two things very clear," he continued. "Number one, a decision this big does not happen in his administration without him knowing about it. And number two, he didn't know about this decision being made in his administration."
"Now people can assume what they want to assume with that," he elaborated. "But that leads to me to a very clear conclusion, which is he's not happy with Pete Hegseth, and he's sending a message inside the administration that, once again, Pete Hegseth has stepped outside the lines of the administration. He did it during transition, where he lied to the transition team. He did it during Signalgate. He's doing it again here, where he made this massive decision, this policy decision, and didn't notify the commander in chief. I mean, it really is breathtaking, isn't it?"
A laughing Kay replied, "I'm loving the decoding of what Donald Trump was saying because I was listening to it and, you're far smarter at this than I am, because I was listening to it thinking, that doesn't make any sense at all."
"But yeah, I get what you're saying is that he's laying the trap," she added. " I didn't order this and I would have to have ordered it. It was a bit like when he said to the reporter, 'I don't know who ordered this, you tell me,' which was also a bit of a strange response, but it's not the first time that Pete Hegseth has done this."
"So there have been these repeated occasions for his supporters of the defense secretary saying, look, he's massively boosted intake and recruitment and that keeps him on the president's good side, the president likes that," she offered. "But I'm going to listen to the president in a new way now and listen for the traps that he's setting for his Cabinet members."
You can watch below or at the link.
- YouTube youtu.be
