On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses the effort to crack down on unapproved reporting about the military
Carusone: It's a closing off of information at a time when they're already signaling that they're going to do fairly extraordinary and terrifying things with the military
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From the October 14, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, let me show you -- Angelo, before you say it, this was all in writing in Project 2025. Let me just give you one more element to respond to. This is newly released video of an interview that Jack Smith, former special counsel, did with my colleague Andrew Weissmann about Pete Hegseth's signal chat and the things he shared on that Signal chat with the journalist.
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WALLACE: I just wanted to baseline this conversation in how far from normal for a Democrat or a Republican and from Trump 1.0. we are in having this conversation. Your thoughts on these developments at the Pentagon?
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): A couple of things. One, I'm glad that you played that clip because it's worth considering here that a lot of the internal guardrails — inspector generals, the types of internal checks, and sort of accountability systems, they've already gotten rid of most of those, not just at the Pentagon but across the government. So, if you get rid of those internal checks and safeguards, then the other alternative is the Fourth Estate — is the press that's doing the types of reporting to help expose these things, corruption, these types of violations of confidentiality and war plans. That's the type of stuff that investigative reporters do. So, when you get rid of the internal guardrails, then the backup is also gone, which is now the media. This is also that — so one, I think it's worth keeping that in mind that they're connected, that it's not just that they're reckless, but there's also a plan and intentionality here in controlling the information. So, that's the first thing. And there is a connective tissue there.
I think broadly I want to take a step back and put two things on the table here because when I look at this, I think about it in a few ways. One is that this particular incident is kind of sandwiched in between a couple events, right? Right after he gave that speech to the generals, it's worth keeping in mind that Hegseth also required them to — everyone in the Department of Defense, this was reported — to certify that they watched his speech to actually confirm that they did.
And this seems to be a pattern and a trend of sort of forcing these types of affirmations from the individuals around him, not just his employees now, but we're seeing that play out in the press. And so that's the background on this.
The second piece is it's worth keeping in mind that this controlling of information, as Anne pointed out, is taking place right at the same time that they're talking about the Insurrection Act and deploying the troops domestically and using the military in ways that we've never really seen before. So, you know, when you pull it all together, it's not just a closing off of information, but it's a closing off of information at a time when they're already signaling that they're going to do fairly extraordinary and terrifying things with the military.
So, where you'd want to have maximum insight and exposure, even when they're doing those extraordinary things, so we can have a better understanding of what they're thinking about. The second thing is I just want to put a sort of inside baseball here, but it is worth keeping in mind that One America News is the odd one out. And, you know, we can talk about the quality of their work and all that other stuff. But there's another thing that I keep thinking about, which is that they're also the only other news agency or news-type agency that has an official contract with the government where they are providing content for the hollowed out Voice of America that, you know, after Kari Lake hollowed it out, they now take One American News content and distribute that under the banner of Voice of America.
They already have a relationship with the government. So, if I was them, surely I'm not going to sort of, you know, do anything here because I'm already functionally a mouthpiece of the government. And that to me is the the last thing here is the terrifying thing is that as they close off the information, across the government, one of the things we see with all these hype videos and videos is propaganda is that they now have these official channels and then separate from that in the broader information ecosystem, they just flood the zone with hype, with vibes. And that's to me, the unsettling part is not just the moment we're in now, but where we're going to be in three months and what that landscape is going to look like from a qualitative perspective.