‘Wall of Chaos’: Jonathan Lemire on Trump’s First 100 Days

Jonathan Lemire has seen this movie before. And now, 100 days into Donald Trump’s second term, the Morning Joe co-host and Atlantic political correspondent is watching it unfold with an eerie sense of déjà vu.

“They’ve now had four-plus years to prepare,” Lemire said to Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin on this week’s episode of Press Club. “And they’re still hitting the same wall of chaos.”

Lemire described the start of the administration as a tale of two halves. The first 50 or 60 days, he said, felt like a well-oiled machine.

“They came in with a plan. This was not 2017. They used the Heritage Foundation. They used Project 2025. Stephen Miller had his groups. They hit the ground running,” argued Lemire

But in recent weeks, scandals like Signalgate and economic fallout from Trump’s sweeping implementation of tariffs have derailed that momentum.

According to Lemire, there’s an internal recognition that the administration is now off track. “There’s no panic yet, but there’s recognition,” he said. “The economy and immigration were the two things Americans used to trust him on. Now both approval ratings are underwater.”

Lemire also addressed the White House shakeup that saw Marco Rubio replace Mike Waltz as national security advisor. Waltz, he explained, “never quite meshed with the MAGA atmosphere.” His departure came not for a breach of security, but for something more Trumpian: “Waltz was criticized in the Trump world, not for any breach of security, but for having an establishment journalist’s number on his phone.”

The internal chaos mirrors a deeper trend Lemire has observed: a full-scale crackdown on the press. While Trump’s first term was marked by combative rhetoric, Lemire said this term has taken a darker turn. “He’s much more effective using the levers of power this time,” he warned. “There’s certainly a fear in the media industry that this is the beginning.”

The press pool system has already been “hijacked,” Lemire said, citing the targeting of the Associated Press. “Presidents of both parties, for decades, left that alone,” he said. “Now it’s being dismantled.”

Trump may no longer fear backlash from his party or bad headlines from the media. But as Lemire put it, “There are still consequences — at least in public opinion. And we’re starting to see them.”

“The best way to reach people who have lost trust is just to do your job, and do it well,” he said. “Stick to the facts. Present the truth. And do it every day.”

Mediaite’s Press Club airs in full Saturdays at 9 a.m. on Sirius XM’s POTUS Channel 124. You can also subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Aidan McLaughlin: I’ve found your writing for The Atlantic to be an indispensable guide to the Trump administration so far. So, in that vein, we’re 100 days in: What is your top-line assessment of the Trump administration and how it’s going?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, I appreciate you reading first and foremost. It’s been a tale of a hundred days that you can almost divide in half. The first 50, 60 days, they felt like they were getting everything they wanted done. They came in with a plan. This was not 2017, when they were still figuring out how to turn on the lights in the West Wing. They had four years in exile. They used the Heritage Foundation. They used Project 2025. Stephen Miller had his groups. This was four years of Republicans waiting to seize power again. And they were ready, and they hit the ground running. We all remember January 20th, inauguration day, the flurry of executive orders that Trump signed that very day, including from the arena that afternoon and then at the Oval Office that evening. And it’s been nonstop. They really wanted to push their agenda on things like immigration, first and foremost, as well as aspects of retribution — really trying to take use of power in the first hundred days in a way we’ve rarely seen since FDR coined that term. They’ve been derailed somewhat in the last month due to Signalgate and real questions raised about some of their strong-armed deportation tactics. The administration thinks it’s playing well; polls suggest Americans disagree. And then, of course, the trade war and the tariffs, which have really raised economic anxiety. Trump himself still seems very bullish, but those around him that I talk to each and every day — there’s no panic yet, but there’s recognition that things have gone off track a little bit.

It reminds me a little bit of the travel ban in the first week of Trump’s last term, which created mass chaos. The question is, why are you starting with the chaos? Why are you starting with tariffs, the single most inflationary thing you could do?

You’re right, first of all, that I think those first few weeks — even Americans who didn’t vote for him — just kind of liked that he was doing stuff. Like, “Look, he’s looking out for us.” And if he had then coupled that with — I was speaking to a Republican operative this week — frankly, if he had just left the economy alone and gone golfing… well, he does that on the weekends anyway. If he’d left the economy alone and exacted other parts of his agenda — maybe leaving some of the retribution aside, because that’s not that popular either — and focused on immigration or even some of the cultural stuff, I think his approval rating would be significantly higher than it is now. You’re right to evoke the travel ban, which came at the end of that first week — it spurred mass protests and a real sense that this administration didn’t know what it was doing. I actually spoke to Steve Bannon earlier this year for one of my early pieces at The Atlantic, back when the Trump administration still thought things were going very well. And he said, “Look, in 2017, we didn’t know what we were doing. We were writing executive orders on the backs of napkins. We didn’t have a team of lawyers. No wonder they all got thrown out in the courts.” They’ve now had four-plus years to prepare. And they’re still hitting the same sort of wall of chaos. They’re still being sloppy in a lot of ways. That perception — that “we know what we’re doing this time around” — was something they were proud of early on, and that’s taken a real hit.

The big news this week was first scalp of the Trump administration: Mike Waltz, national security advisor, is moving to UN ambassador. Marco Rubio is now taking over as national security advisor, at least in an interim capacity. Do you have a sense of what happened?

Mike Waltz was an odd pick to begin with, and he never quite meshed with the MAGA atmosphere of this Trump term. He’s more of a traditional Republican, more of a neocon—more hawkish on Russia and Iran. He was viewed with suspicion from day one. He really clashed with some of the more — shall we say — pseudo-isolationists, including JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and outside allies like Steve Bannon. He gave up a safe congressional seat to take this job and immediately felt like he was out of step. Then Signalgate happens. That wasn’t the reason he was ousted, but it sure didn’t help. And not for the reasons you might think. Waltz started the Signal group, but it was originally for planning purposes. It was Secretary of Defense Hegseth who put in classified information on attack plans. Waltz took the blame, not Hegseth — partly because Hegseth is much more popular in the MAGA right than Waltz. Waltz was criticized in the Trump world, not for any breach of security or break in protocol, but for having an establishment journalist’s number on his phone.

Right, the sin in their eyes was not the massive security breach that Pete Hegseth is responsible for.

It’s knowing Jeffrey Goldberg. That was really held against him. I reported the next day that there were people in Trump’s orbit who wanted him out. But the ethos was — using the phrase they’ve all adopted — it’s become their unorthodox rallying cry: “no scalps.” They didn’t want to hand their foes, in this case the media, a victory. And Trump in particular said, “I don’t want anything like this to happen in the first hundred days.” Well, on day 101, Mike Waltz was out. Yes, he outlasted Mike Flynn, who only made it 24 days or so. Trump regretted how Flynn was pushed out. Waltz petitioned for a soft landing. He got the UN ambassador post, which on one hand gets him out of Trump’s hair, sent up to New York, but does require Senate confirmation. Those hearings will be challenging for Waltz because Signalgate’s going to come back. And inadvertently, it may put the spotlight back on Hegseth. Suddenly, we’re all going to be talking about Signalgate again.

The reason the no-scalps policy actually works this time around is that Trump can operate with total impunity. He’s not going to face impeachment, he doesn’t have to run for re-election, he doesn’t really care what the media says anymore, and no Republicans are challenging him. So why fire anyone for anything?

All of that is right. But I think for him, this time around, he really just wants to be surrounded by the true believers. He doesn’t want H.R. McMaster, or James Mattis, or John Bolton, or John Kelly. And certainly, for the most part, that’s what he has. Waltz was one of the few outliers coming in. I was told yesterday, in fact, that one of the things held against Waltz was the fact that establishment types praised the pick — “Oh, he’ll be a responsible choice for National Security Advisor.” Trump didn’t like that. Marco Rubio was also in that box initially — sort of a former Trump foe in many ways — but he’s one who has really changed his worldview to more closely adhere to what Trump believes. So at least for now, Rubio’s in. Although I don’t think he’s seen as a hardcore MAGA type, he’s done a good job navigating the boss.

He’s putting on the mask a little bit more.

Yeah, Waltz really never did. Even this week, I reported that Trump, for the first time, was sort of agitated about Putin, about the lack of a ceasefire in Ukraine. We’ll see if he does anything about it. If he passes Prolog, he won’t. But he at least listened to conversations about maybe doing something against Russia, like sanctions. Waltz has been a steady advocate, including this week, of really hard sanctions against Moscow. That didn’t play well.

Where does this leave Pete Hegseth?

For now, he’s safe. But I don’t know that that’s a long-term status. My colleagues at The Atlantic, when they interviewed President Trump at the end of last week — it was published this week — Trump made a point of saying he likes Hegseth, that he’s doing a good job. “But I talked to him. I had to talk to him about this.” He made it clear — this was not OK. Hegseth also has — it’s not just that one particular scandal. He’s overseen real tumult at the Pentagon, where a lot of his top advisers have all left or been fired, some of whom he brought on. There’s a sense that he is really isolated there, that he spent most of last week fighting for his job in TV interviews. He did well enough to hang on for the time being. I think Waltz’s dismissal buys him some more time, but there’s a sense within Trump’s inner circle in the West Wing that he’s OK for now, but his job performance has to improve, or he may be the next to go.

One of the things I suspect keeps Hegseth safe is that whenever there’s controversy around him, when there are bad headlines, he is out in front of a camera.

Always.

It’s so Trumpian. And I feel like that will keep him alive longer than he would otherwise be, because it signals he’s a “fighter.”

Yeah, your theory is right. People I’ve talked to say that, first of all, that was held against Waltz — that his TV appearances post-Signalgate weren’t great. Trump didn’t think he was effectively fighting for himself and for the president. Hegseth is. Trump has given him high marks for being on TV. And also, the idea of Hegseth fighting is reminiscent of his cabinet confirmation hearings, where he was really close, and MAGA had to rally behind him. That reminded a lot of people of the Kavanaugh hearing. Which was such an essential part of the Trump legend — the Kavanaugh fight that got Republicans behind him and got him on the bench. That was evoked again in the Hegseth confirmation — a similar fight. And that has endeared him to Trump loyalists, who I think will try to defend him going forward in a way they never were going to defend Waltz.

We are in season 58 of The Apprentice. How much of a mess is it at the Pentagon now? Do you have a sense of how it’s operating? This is a pretty serious department.

Perhaps the most important one. Yeah, there’s a real sense of dysfunction there right now, particularly last week, when some of these aides were shown the door, and they weren’t even sure necessarily for what. Some of them went on to do interviews. And publicly, some people who are close Hegseth allies said things like, “He’s not up for this job.” One of them wrote a big op-ed for a political magazine about it. There haven’t been new headlines this week, although I think we should all expect more about Hegseth in the weeks ahead — and not just when the Waltz confirmation hearings begin. There’s a sense that he is deeply isolated. A lot of questions have been raised about the presence of his wife, who’s in a lot of meetings.

A former Fox News producer.

Correct. She’s in a lot of meetings that most at the Pentagon think she should not be. His brother has a Pentagon job, and so does his attorney. They’re sort of always around. Minders, if you will — and that’s raised real questions in the Pentagon as to why that is. Is he keeping his circle too close, to the point where he’s simply not being informed the way he should be to make good decisions?

What has it been like reporting on this administration compared to the first term? Has it changed at all in how it operates? Is it leakier? Is it more buttoned up?

It is a little more buttoned up. We’ve seen some breaks in the dam of late, but there’s no question — the first Trump term, particularly that first year, was an open book.

Michael Wolff was sleeping on a couch in the White House.

Because there was such infighting, where Bannon and his crew would try to knife Priebus and his crew, and then they would just move on.

Unlike the first term, I’d imagine the White House is now stocked with a lot of people who came up in this Trump era of believing the media is actually the enemy. So there’s no leaking or talking to the press — because it’s not performative anymore, it’s real now.

That’s exactly right. It’s a tone that’s been set by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles as well. There’s definitely an effort to cut down on leaks. We’ve even seen some agencies talk about leak investigations. It hasn’t come from the White House yet, which is a different concern, to be sure. They’re more confrontational. That said, those in the press shop are largely professional. It’s this interesting dichotomy where on TwitterX, they slam you, but behind the scenes, they’ll take phone calls, answer questions, and respond to emails professionally. So that’s still happening — at least for now — under Karoline Leavitt and Stephen Chung. But it’s a different sense than last time. Trump — look, he is still very available, much more so than his predecessors. But he faces fewer adversarial questions this time around. We’re also seeing that in the White House briefing room. There’s a larger conversation about how they’ve tried to hijack the press pool system, kicking out the AP and the like. That’s all very concerning.

How concerned are you by Trump’s attacks on the press? This week CBS News was the one in the crosshairs, because it appears like they’re going to settle this lawsuit from Trump, which is basically a shakedown, because Shari Redstone, wants to get a deal through to sell Paramount to SkyDance. Trump’s war on the press was more rhetoric in the first term. Now it’s action. Is that concerning to you?

Of course it is. He’s much more effective using the levers of power this time, effective and creative. We’ve seen that with law firms. We’ve seen that with universities. And we’re seeing it with a few media organizations. There’s a sense — there’s certainly a fear in the media industry that this is the beginning. That he hasn’t really spent much time on us yet — but it’s coming. Right now, it’s been a few of the corporates — ABC, CBS, as you mentioned. We’ll see if there’s more. There was the nonsense with Politico and pulling government funding. But there may be a more organized attack on the media going forward. And then you add the smaller things — like policing language, knocking out the Associated Press from the pool because they refused to say “Gulf of America”, or installing new media seats. Look, I’m a member of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and we’re all for growing our membership. Most, though not all, of the new occupants of that seat are certainly right-leaning outlets that cover the administration very positively. And then taking over the pool system as well. Presidents of both parties, for decades, left that alone, understanding the need for independent eyes and ears to represent the American public in places like the Oval Office, Air Force One, or on foreign trips. And we’ve seen the Trump team do away with that.

I’m curious what you think of this new media ecosystem we live in, where media has been totally decentralized. What do you make of the rise of this independent media ecosystem?

There’s some good. More voices, different perspectives — that’s good. But of course, there are concerns. Just picking up a smartphone does not make you a journalist. It’s about schooling, it’s about experience, it’s working with colleagues, it’s about having an editor. You can go down the list. It’s a hard job and an important job. A basic foundational tenet of a democracy is to have a healthy, working press. So anything that encroaches on that is a concern. I’d like to think that people still want to seek out the truth and seek out the facts. But unfortunately, we’re seeing only an acceleration of the trend toward pure tribalism — even in the media. It’s just so easy to find voices you agree with and stay in your silo — Team Red, Team Blue — where a Fox News viewer would never even think of reading The New York Times, and vice versa. And if we can’t agree on the same set of facts, it’s obviously deeply worrisome.

Do you think about that in your work, about how to appeal to people who might have lost trust in mainstream media?

I think the best way to do that — at least for me — is just to do my job, and do it as fairly and as well as I can, and hope that it reaches the right people. I feel fortunate to work at two places — both MSNBC and The Atlantic — that are investing in journalism, that haven’t kowtowed to power, and that are just doing their jobs without fear or favor. And I think our work has never been more important. Of course, there are market concerns. We’re all worried about the state of the industry. But the best we can do is just do our job well.

Because there was a concern in the aftermath of this election that people would just totally tune out. I know this was a big concern at MSNBC. Do you feel like people are starting to tune in again, now that the Trump administration’s really getting going and there’s real news to follow?

I do — and the ratings back that up. They did fall off for a number of the networks, and page views dropped for some newspapers right after the election. But they’ve bounced back in a significant way. I’ve spoken to Democrats in Washington, in New York, around the country — who, sure, in those first few months, wanted nothing to do with it. “Can’t believe he won again, I’m so disgusted, I’m exhausted, I can’t do it.” And they took a break. But I think a lot of them — maybe not all yet — but a lot have returned, realizing it’s important to know what’s going on. Some of these Trump stories in the last month or two — especially the economy, first and foremost, the way he’s rattled it — have broken through. People are saying: “This is impacting my life every day. I need to know about it.”

And I think The Atlantic has done good job of capturing that audience. I’d imagine subscriptions are up at The Atlantic.

Yeah, Jeffrey was on Morning Joe yesterday and talked about that. We’ve had Signalgate, which, of course, The Atlantic broke, which doesn’t hurt. Business is good. It’s an ownership group where the owner invests in it. We’re expanding. It’s a place that’s really meeting the moment.

You’re on Morning Joe, you’re a co-host there. It’s a show that’s known for the strong perspectives of Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. Your approach is to play it more straight. Is that harder to do in the Trump era?

I think when I’m on air, I stick to the facts. I present: this is what the administration is saying; this is what other people are saying. But there are moments when I let my feelings or emotions show through — because some of it is indefensible. You’re telling human stories — you’re going to be animated by them. And so I think, yeah, I’m always mindful of that. I worked a long time at the Associated Press, so a lot of that has been drilled into me about being a neutral observer. But we’re also in a different time now. You can’t just sit on your hands and say, “Person A said this, Person B said that.” You have to engage in a real way, and I think the viewers respond to that.

What do you think about audience capture? Do you feel pressure to avoid telling your audience something they don’t want to hear, on, let’s say, Morning Joe, which has an audience that leans anti-Trump?

No, I actually don’t. There’s never been any pressure exerted from above about “we’re gonna talk about this” or “not talk about that.” I think our job is — and yeah, look, I think the show in general, and certainly me as an individual — I’m going to talk about what I think is important. And yeah, after the election, we had to talk about how Donald Trump won — and did so in a way more impressive than last time. He captured this voting group and this voting group. Of course, not everyone is going to want to hear that. But my job is to tell the truth as best I can, to stick to the facts as best I can. And I’d like to think that the willingness to say things the audience doesn’t always want to hear actually helps my credibility. It helps them trust me when I’m saying other things too, even when it’s something they do want to hear. They’ll say, “I believe it because that guy’s saying it.”

There’s been a big debate lately about the media’s handling of Biden and his cognitive abilities, or lack thereof. What do you make of this debate about the media’s handling of that story and whether or not it was complicit in a cover-up?

I strongly push back against the idea that we were complicit in some sort of cover-up. I’ll speak for myself — at the time, I was at Politico as well as MSNBC. We wrote a lot of tough stories about where President Biden was, and questions Democrats had about his fitness for office. We also wrote stories when he did things well — when he had a legislative accomplishment or delivered a fiery defense of Ukraine, whatever it might be. We told the story, day in and day out, as best we could. We were certainly not taking talking points from the White House to cover things up. Certainly, there are lots of questions now about the Biden inner circle and how they handled this. But at the end of the day, this was an 80-something-year-old president who, like a lot of 80-something-year-old people, would have some days that were better than others. And you’d see it play out in real time.

We did the behind-the-scenes reporting, and we wrote some really powerful stuff. That work was nominated for awards, especially after that debate where he faltered badly. But the American people could see it too. The debate resonated because so many people watched. If you were paying attention daily or reading our coverage daily, you’d see strong moments, and other days that were certainly less strong. We should also just note: this was a storyline that Democrats and the Biden team were aware of going back to the 2022 midterms. That was a cycle where the party did surprisingly well. The Biden team took it as a cue that this was, in part, a reflection of the president, that he should run again.

And I think at the time, Democrats said, “He’s done a good job. His first two years, in terms of legislative accomplishments, were very successful.” But even then, he’s done a good job, the party had a good midterms, there were polls that said, “We think he’s too old to run again.” And they ignored them.

That’s the thing I don’t understand about the cover-up idea. I get the argument that Biden was too old. And I think the White House and Democrats were delusional about the shape he was in. But you could see that when he went on television. So it wasn’t possible to have a cover-up. He was out in public.

American people already thought that. That’s why the debate hit the way it did — not because it was a shock, but rather it reinforced fears people already had. People already thought he was too old. Then, when he had a particularly bad night, which he did, it became pure panic. I think the Biden White House actively fought reporters on these stories. That’s not a cover-up — that’s just them trying to do their jobs. You could criticize them and say, “That wasn’t the right approach,” and I think with hindsight, most Democrats would agree. But they fought us on that. A lot of Democrats also sort of wish-cast — “I think he’ll be okay.” And the reason there was such panic in the party that night is that the scales fell from their eyes. Any denial they had been in — they had to put away and say, “Look, actually, it is a concern.”

Do you think the press could have been more aggressive in reporting it?

I think we were aggressive. Look, in any campaign, mistakes are made. I’ve covered a number of them at this point. There were mistakes made in our coverage in 2016 that have been well-documented. I’d like to think we did better in 2020, but it wasn’t perfect. We made mistakes in 2024 as well. But there were tough stories written by every outlet. A few got more buzz than others.

The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal had a piece, Axios did some stuff, but we at Politico did, and NBC did, The New York Times did. There was real scrutiny on the president and how he was doing then, just as there’s real scrutiny now about the current president.

Right. Now you’re co-hosting Morning Joe — and that’s four hours?

Yes.

You were doing five hours before?

Yes. I hosted Way Too Early, which is the 5 a.m. show, for about three years. That’s from 5 to 6 a.m., and then I would do four hours of Morning Joe.

What is it like hosting five hours of television?

It’s a privilege. It’s an honor. I love it. It’s also exhausting. When I was doing 5 a.m., my alarm would go off at 3:15. That’s really early.

What time did you go to bed?

Good question. I would aim for 9:30, but I have two kids at home. I have two boys, ages 10 and 13 — they weren’t going to bed yet. That’s not easy for me. They’d have evening sports, or we’d watch the Red Sox. I was not getting nearly enough sleep, is the answer, while also doing my job at Politico. Now I start at six as co-host of Morning Joe, so I get to sleep in all the way to 4:30.

And you had a pretty full-time role at Politico, too.

I was the White House bureau chief.

The White House bureau chief and hosting five hours of television a day.

It was a lot. And these were obviously very busy news cycles. I’d be involved in three or four stories a day. Sometimes that meant I was just contributing — making calls and feeding — rather than anchoring a story each day. We had a strong team, I was glad to be part of. But yeah, it was a lot. At the time, it felt like the moment called for it. And I was fortunate to be trusted in those positions.

So now you’ve got Morning Joe and The Atlantic. How do you approach the job at The Atlantic? Do you pick major stories you think are worth covering and then hit the phones?

It’s a mix of a couple of things. Yes, I’m still very much covering this day-to-day, in part to inform my reporting on the TV show. So I’m on the phone a lot. My print responsibilities are a little different, but I’m still doing a lot. When I was talking to The Atlantic, I thought the pace would slow down — that I’d write just now and then. That has not been the case. I’m nearly as busy as I was before. The team is great and growing. The editors there are terrific. Sometimes I’ll pick a story and say, “This is an important topic and I’m going to write it.” Other times, I have to react to the news — write a spot story. I’m doing more of that than I expected. But these feel like such consequential times. It would feel almost irresponsible not to try to rise to that.

You worked at AP, the New York Daily News, Politico — very much a traditional media journalist. How did you make the leap into broadcasting?

Yeah, my career path was Daily News, then AP. I covered the Trump campaign in 2016 for AP. Then I was covering the White House for them in 2017. In early 2017, there was a cable news boom and demand for guests who could talk knowledgeably and provide real information about the White House. I had really not done any TV prior to that. This is all post-2017. I initially did guest hits for all the networks, but really carved out a home for myself at MSNBC, first with Nicolle Wallace and Brian Williams. Then I was brought on as a contributor to Morning Joe. I really became part of the Morning Joe family, which I’m so grateful for. That led to the hosting job — first Way Too Early, now this. But I still think of myself a little bit as a print person first, despite the four to five hours of TV every day.

So you’re not joining YouTube anytime soon?

I don’t think so. Morning Joe is available on YouTube — you should watch it there if you’d like! But no, I haven’t done much independent video stuff. Not yet, anyway.