Paul Waldman

The columnist who bet against Pete Hegseth

Paul Waldman is the political columnist and author who made one of the year’s boldest cabinet predictions. In “Pete Hegseth will be the next to fall,” written for Aaron Rupar’s independent publication Public Notice, he opened with a disclaimer — “As ill-advised as it is to make predictions in politics, we’ll offer this one” — and then offered it anyway: “Hegseth will be the next Trump cabinet secretary to be fired or forced to resign, and it won’t be long” (Public Notice).

Waldman’s theory of Trump-era firing was as blunt as the prediction. “Being bad at your job won’t get you the boot in Donald Trump’s government; for that, you have to become enough of a public embarrassment that he decides you’re reflecting poorly on him,” he wrote — adding that Trump would fire Hegseth for “the pettiest of reasons,” and “maybe he’ll do it on a whim because he thinks it will make for good TV” (Public Notice). The piece surveyed weeks of turmoil at the Pentagon: a testosterone-screening policy that was instituted and then rescinded amid widespread mockery, flag-officer purges, pervasive paranoia about leaks, and a looming shortage of critical munitions — with Trump reportedly angry at Hegseth at Camp David over depleted stockpiles (Public Notice). “Hegseth is just about there,” Waldman concluded (Public Notice).

The piece also carried a link to paulwaldman.substack.com, confirming that Waldman publishes on Substack in addition to his other platforms (Public Notice).

An MSNBC columnist, a Public Notice regular, a Substack writer

Waldman is an American political columnist and author who writes The Cross Section on Substack (Leigh Bureau). He is an opinion columnist for MSNBC (Leigh Bureau), and he cohosts the Boundary Issues podcast (Leigh Bureau).

At Public Notice, Waldman is both a contributor and the regular co-host of the PN Pod with Aaron Rupar — “I’m thrilled to have the great Paul Waldman onboard as my regular co-host,” Rupar announced when the podcast debuted (Public Notice). The PN Pod goes live every Friday at 2pm eastern (Public Notice). Public Notice itself is Rupar’s independent, reader-supported publication on politics and media — “fair, not impartial,” in its own words (Public Notice).

These current roles update the older biographical framing, which presents him primarily as a Washington Post blogger and American Prospect writer. He did hold those positions: the Leigh bio notes that he wrote for the American Prospect, The Week, and the Washington Post, where he wrote “The Plum Line” alongside Greg Sargent (Leigh Bureau). His billmoyers.com author page describes him as a weekly columnist and senior writer for The American Prospect who also wrote for the Plum Line blog at the Post and The Week (billmoyers.com).

The books

Waldman co-authored White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy with Tom Schaller, and it debuted on both the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists (Leigh Bureau). He is also the author of four other books on politics and the media: Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn from Conservative Success, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Political World, Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn’t Tell You, and Free Ride: John McCain and the Media (Leigh Bureau).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not assert Waldman’s date of birth, his reported Media Matters or Annenberg tenures, or a publication year for White Rural Rage, since none were verified from a source read in full. It does not assert a publication date for the Hegseth piece, and it treats the prediction as self-described speculation — reporting only that Waldman made it, not that it is true or that it was borne out. It does not characterize Public Notice’s editorial position beyond the publication’s own description of itself. The books are named in the body without publication years, since the read sources give no dates.