‘What a Wild Thing To Say’: Jake Tapper Mocks JD Vance’s Explanation for Waltz’s Ouster as NatSec Advisor
Jake Tapper scoffed at the reason given by Vice President JD Vance to explain the latest personnel shakeup in the Trump administration.
Vance sat for an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News’s Special Report on Thursday and was asked right away about the day’s big news. Just hours earlier, it was reported that President Donald Trump fired National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. In March, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic revealed that Waltz accidentally added him to a Signal group chat with other government officials. In the chat, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared details about upcoming airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
Though the president had insisted Waltz was safe in his role, that turned out not to be the case. However, shortly after removing Waltz, Trump nominated him to be ambassador to the U.N.
Tapper played a clip of Baier’s interview with Vance during Thursday’s edition of The Lead. Vance told Baier:
We brought Mike on to do some serious reforms in the National Security Council. He has done that. I like Mike. I think he’s a great guy. He’s got the trust of both me and the president. But we also thought that he’d make a better U.N. ambassador as we get beyond this stage of the reforms that we’ve made to the National Security Council…
If the president wanted to fire him over the Signal thing, which, by the way, was a total nothingburger of a story, he would’ve just done it.
The clip ended, and Tapper responded, “Not a total nothingburger of a story. What a wild thing to say.”
He then welcomed former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to the program.
“What do you make of him saying it’s a nothingburger and this move today had nothing to do with that?” Tapped asked.
“I think one of the big problems with the president and the vice president and the administration generally, is that they just don’t speak the truth to the American people,” Panetta replied. “They’re always looking for an excuse. They’re always looking to blame somebody else. They’re always working to kind of downplay some of the most serious mistakes I’ve ever seen in terms of security breaches. And I just think in the end, the American people just don’t trust what they say. And I certainly don’t.”
Watch above via CNN.
