Batya Ungar-Sargon, a rising political pundit who calls herself a “MAGA leftist” and a “Marxist,” is facing backlash after echoing Republican talking points, attacking former President Barack Obama, and praising Donald Trump—all while getting basic facts wrong, including when each was in office, and then doubling down on her claims.

Some may remember the global financial crisis of 2008, which occurred during the final months of the presidential race that ultimately put Barack Obama in the White House — in January 2009. To help protect the financial industry, Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly known as TARP. President Bush signed it into law on October 3, 2008, as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.

Not according to Ungar-Sargon.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the 10 million Americans who lost their homes in the 2008 financial crisis, and how President Obama’s first act in office was to give $700 billion to the banks that caused it, including $3 billion in bonuses to the crooks who organized it,” she said on CNN’s “NewsNight” on Thursday.

“And I’m thinking about how those very Americans saw a president [Obama] pick Wall Street over Main Street and what they saw this whole week was a President willing to go out there and fight for the forgotten men and women of this heartland and take on the entire international global order for them.”

READ MORE: DOT Chief Warns Against ‘Fear Mongering’ as Second Aircraft Crash Turns Fatal

Her remarks were met with varying degrees of disbelief and pushback.

“Lots of people in the heartland have 401Ks,” Neera Tanden, who served as President Joe Biden’s Director of the Domestic Policy Council, reminded Ungar-Sargon. “They have jobs where they work for a company, that is thinking of now laying them off because the supply chain is impossible. The idea that he’s taking on the global elite, when he’s offering a giant tax cut to the billionaires, I’m sorry, it makes very little sense.”

Financial journalist James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds,” wrote: “TARP was necessary. But even if you don’t agree, blaming Obama for a law passed by Congress while Bush was president is a sign of total ‘Somehow it’s always liberals’ fault’ derangement.”

Thursday night, CNN’s Richard Quest slammed Ungar-Sargon’s claims Trump is “taking on” Wall Street on behalf of the forgotten working class.”

“Will we please stop this ‘forgotten working class’?” Quest urged. “Everybody in some shape or form is part of a working class, either historically, today or whatever, and every one of us, in some shape or form, lives in an economic environment where we are aware of what is happening in our own areas. But this idea that somehow it’s Wall Street versus Main Street and Main Street doesn’t care about Wall Street and Wall Street just wants —”

Friday morning, Ungar-Sargon doubled down on social media, writing: “In 2008, President Obama bailed out Wall Street and screwed over Main Street. In 2024, President Trump screwed over Wall Street to bail out Main Street. That’s what a lot of Americans are going to remember about last week.”

Veteran journalist John Harwood unleashed his anger, writing, “as if these bulls— cliches weren’t dumb enough, George W Bush was president in 2008 and Joe Biden was president in 2024.”

READ MORE: ‘MAGA Cruelty’: Johnson Blasted for Blaming ‘Young Men’ to Justify GOP’s Medicaid Cuts

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, chastised CNN’s Abby Phillip and her producers, saying, “putting on bloviating ignoramuses should be a no-no.”

Phil Magness, an economic historian for a libertarian think tank, slammed Ungar-Sargon:

“How did a Marxist English PhD with no background or understanding in basic economics become the go-to cable news ‘economic’ commentator for the MAGA tariff agenda?”

2008, for some, was a long time ago. Some may not have been alive, many may not have been old enough to remember the events.

“​In September 2008 our nation was on the edge of falling into a second Great Depression,” the U.S. Department of the Treasury says on its website. “Confidence in the financial system was vanishing and panic was spreading.”

“Every major financial institution was vulnerable. The credit markets that provide financing for credit cards, student loans, mortgage loans, auto loans, small business loans and other types of financing stopped functioning,” Treasury added, noting that “a generalized run on the nation’s banking system was a real possibility.”

“The nation was losing almost 800,000 jobs a month and household wealth had fallen by 17 percent – more than five times the decline in 1929. It was out of these extraordinary circumstances that TARP was created to restore the nation’s financial stability and restart economic growth.”

Congress authorized $700 billion, but that number was scaled back much further under President Obama. Much of the funds that were allocated were repaid. The final cost to taxpayers was about $31.1 billion — less than 4.5% of the figure Ungar-Sargon quoted.

Former Obama National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor blasted Ungar-Sargon and CNN.

“Bush was President in 2008. Trump’s tariffs are cratering the economy in 2025. I would recommend that @CNN and @abbydphillip stop inviting on pundits who don’t seem to have a handle on the most basic facts about politics or economics.”

Another former Obama spokesperson, Aaron Albright, reminded that the “first major bill Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act….when he became president in 2009.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Ungar-Sargon: And the way that he went about doing that is he basically picked up a baseball bat and said to the entire global elites, that’s a really nice stock market you’ve got. It would be a shame if anything happened to it pic.twitter.com/qPqqOHu9Rn

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 11, 2025

READ MORE: ‘Giant Grift’: Calls for Trump Insider Trading Probe Surge Over ‘Corruption’ Questions

Less than two weeks ago there was SignalGate, the Trump administration’s national security scandal that potentially endangered the lives of U.S. service members, and risked exposing military plans, by using an insecure channel to discuss, map out, and announce progress of an attack in Yemen. Then there was the Trump administration’s passwords scandal, where passwords, email addresses, and phone numbers of top Trump national security officials were easily found online. And just yesterday, GmailGate, the Trump administration’s use of the even less-secure commercial email app, to conduct government business.

All three crises involved President Donald Trump’s national security team, including White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, who admitted to setting up the insecure Signal chat.

On Wednesday afternoon, Politico reported that Waltz’s team actually had set up 20 or more different Signal group chats, for national security crises.

“National security adviser Mike Waltz’s team regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe, according to four people who have been personally added to Signal chats,” according to Politico. “Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of sensitive information being discussed.”

READ MORE: ‘Significant Political Rift’: Trump Faces Possible Defeat in First Tariff Test

“Waltz built the entire NSC communications process on Signal,” said one of the four sources.

Experts have warned that the use of Signal in certain circumstances may violate national security regulations, as well as federal law surrounding retention of government communications.

The use of Signal on personal cell phones is also problematic because those mobile devices can easily be compromised, experts say. CISA, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has recommended the use of Signal instead of less secure platforms, but not for classified or sensitive communications.

“None of the four individuals said they were aware of whether any classified information was shared, but all said that posts in group chats did include sensitive details of national security work,” Politico noted.

Additionally, on Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported more concerning national security lapses.

“Two U.S. officials also said that Waltz has created and hosted multiple other sensitive national-security conversations on Signal with cabinet members, including separate threads on how to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine as well as military operations. They declined to address if any classified information was posted in those chats,” the Journal reported. It was not clear if these were among the 20 or more chats Politico reported on Wednesday.

RELATED: ‘Just Plain Dumb’: Trump’s Smuggled Fentanyl Tariff Mocked

“In under 10 days, we’ve heard about journalists added to unclassified chats and sensitive data being shot around on personal emails,” lamented U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “And now we’re hearing there’s dozens more chats. It’s a never-ending parade of sloppy, reckless incompetence.”

U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), also responding to the latest news from Politico, wrote: “President Trump must put our troops and national security first. Waltz must step down. If he won’t, President Trump should fire him.”

Democratic congressional candidate Cait Conley is a former National Security Council official who “spent nearly 20 years in the military, including a stint working on counterterrorism for the National Security Council under former President Biden,” The New York Times has reported. She also worked at CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

“This is not an Administration that’s serious about protecting America. Every person on those (20!) group chats should have known better,” Conley observed.

“The national security advisor continues to put our country at risk by using chats to discuss sensitive issues, allowing our adversaries to potentially intercept these messages,” commented former Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary and former Special Assistant to the President Sabrina Singh. “This is not putting America First – it’s the opposite.”

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), a former Air Force JAG officer, wrote: “National Security Adviser Waltz should resign for repeatedly playing fast and loose with OpSec. Signal should not be used to discuss sensitive information. The Pentagon warned against using Signal even for unclassified information.”

MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend snarked, “Amateur hour at the OK Corral and that’s even offensive to the amateurs.”

“This is Trump’s CLOWN CAR CABINET!,” charged CNN commentator Maria Cardona. “Incompetent, unqualified, unserious. AND these massive national security blunders, put US all is SERIOUS danger! They need to go!!”

READ MORE: ‘Paralyzed’: Johnson Mocked for Shutting House Down After ‘Brutal’ Defeat

Image via Reuters 

After initially claiming ignorance of a bombshell national security breach, President Donald Trump is now dismissing the allegedly potentially criminal use of an unsecured messaging app—and the possible sharing of classified information—by 18 top defense officials, calling it a “non-issue.” He’s also voicing support for his National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, who is at the center of the growing scandal.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” the Commander-in-Chief told NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Garrett Haake, who reports that the President told him he still has confidence in Waltz.

Trump opted to describe what some national security and legal experts have said is a possibly criminal act that could include all 18 of his top officials, including his Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, and White House Chief of Staff, as a mere “glitch.”

READ MORE: Alina Habba Immediately Targets Top NJ Democrats After Trump Names Her New US Attorney

“I asked the President if he were frustrated that the story has gotten so much attention,” Haake reported. “He said no, calling it ‘the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.'”

On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed in a bombshell report that he had been inadvertently invited to the group chat, during which the planned bombings in Yemen were deliberated, debated, and mapped out.

The President also attempted to move the focus away from the use of the open-source commercial messaging app Signal, which reportedly would likely have had to be on non-government phones, to the mission’s success.

“The President told me he believes the story is essentially a non-issue, and that Goldberg’s presence on the chat had ‘no impact at all.’ The attacks, he continued, were ‘perfectly successful,'” Haake added.

“When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, ‘It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there,'” Haake and Megan Lebowitz reported at NBC News.

Waltz, whose account reportedly had sent the Signal invitation Goldberg, reportedly will not resign and will not be fired, Fox News reported earlier on Tuesday.

“A source close to the president told Fox News that Waltz’s job is safe and that he is not on the chopping block,” the right wing website reported. “Fox News is told Waltz has no plans to resign and is sticking to his schedule Tuesday. He will be talking to his Russian counterpart about a Black Sea ceasefire deal and has plans to speak to Trump as usual later Tuesday.”

READ MORE: Arkansas Senator Files Bill to Abolish State Library, Give Education Department Control

U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), according to Deadline, on Monday wrote: “Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally – that would normally involve a jail sentence. We can’t trust anyone in this dangerous administration to keep Americans safe.”

But on Monday evening, Politico had reported that Waltz’s future was “in doubt.”

“Nothing is decided yet, and White House officials cautioned that President Donald Trump would ultimately make the decision over the next day or two as he watches coverage of the embarrassing episode,” Politico reported.

White House staffers were reportedly on multiple text threads discussing what should happen to Waltz.

“Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” said one official.

“A person close to the White House was even more blunt: ‘Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f—— idiot.'”

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican of Nebraska, told CNN: “This is a gross error, and it’s intentional. They intentionally put highly classified information on an unclassified device. I would have lost my security clearance in the Air Force for this and for a lot less.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon on Trump team’s Yemen group chat: “I will guarantee you, 99.99% with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones. So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the attacks… pic.twitter.com/UFnGPsLd51

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 25, 2025

READ MORE: Trump Claims US ‘Doesn’t Need Anything From Canada’, Yet Still Wants It as a State

Image via Reuters