After more than a year with no Cabinet Secretary exits, President Donald Trump has now seen three leave under various circumstances — Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer — in less than two months. The question now is: who might be next?

The Wall Street Journal says Trump’s cabinet secretaries are “dropping like flies,” and Politico reports that high-profile Trump officials are “sweating on their futures.” Politico also notes that the “Cabinet-level calm of the first 13 months of this presidency is over. Trump is in the mood for shaking things up.”

A president with approval ratings currently in the mid-to-upper 30s, Trump is “culling” those who have disappointed or are “distrusted” by his base, Politico writes, with an eye on the midterm elections.

“The campaign is not exactly going swimmingly, and the theory is that problematic members of the administration need clearing out now — still six months from the start of voting — to put sufficient distance between their departures and Election Day.”

The obvious common threads between those out the door — fired, forced, or otherwise leaving — are that all three are women, and were “embroiled in scandal” or distrusted by the base.

Politico suggests two officials who might be next to exit.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been embroiled in scandal and is distrusted by Trump’s base, according to Politico, making him a possible next contender.

“His reputation in MAGA world hasn’t recovered from his role in the initial handling of the Epstein files, while the list of colorful stories (and videos!) about his approach to the job of FBI chief gets longer every month,” Politico notes.

There is also Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has “faced fierce internal criticism from Day One,” and “now has an Epstein-shaped problem of his own.”

“The contrast between how Trump treats the men and the women in his cabinet is notable,” The Bulwark‘s Bill Kristol writes, noting that “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has surely done as much damage to his department and to the nation as Kristi Noem did. But Pete’s still on the job, strutting around and displaying his machismo at the Pentagon.”

Kristol also mentions Secretary Lutnick, who “has profited on a larger scale from the Trump administration than Chavez-DeRemer did. But Lutnick is still there, grifting as men in the Trump orbit do.”

He also points to Director Patel, whom Kristol says is presiding “in all his male adolescent glory as director of the FBI.”

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Do President Donald Trump’s “clownishness” and “lack of ideology” make him less dangerous? A columnist at The Guardian says no.

“Trump’s seeming lack of vision or ideology are misread as attributes that make him somehow less dangerous than the authoritarians of the past who have become the template for what evil looks like,” writes Nesrine Malik. But, “Trump’s presidency is what evil looks like.”

She points to images she remembers from “movies not seen since childhood,” or art and literature, tied together by “kitschy evil.”

She writes that those images seem to be standing in for horrific current events: “the bodies pulled from the rubble in Gaza, a school full of young pupils blown apart in Iran. The more than 1 million people in southern Lebanon expelled en masse from their homes.”

Malik calls it “bewildering” how the “casualness” of the cruelty “has been allowed to pass,” as Donald Trump, who “defies attempts to make his actions cohere with any particular strategy … hovers above the circus of death and chaos.”

Trump and his threats, like those where he threatened “entire civilizations,” are “reshaping the world, but without him even having orchestrated some master plan.”

READ MORE: ‘I’m in Charge!’: Trump Declares ‘I’m Winning a War’ in Series of Wild Rants

Trump “does not adhere to the style or affect of the fascist model,” she argues, “he doesn’t hold rallies, wear uniforms or make fiery speeches from balconies to flag-waving throngs. He hasn’t (entirely yet) overturned the constitution and dismantled democracy.”

“He is an addled comic figure, a man whose very soul is bared in his angry outbursts on social media or in rambling speeches without self-awareness or self-consciousness. He talks about the war on Iran flanked by a gigantic Easter bunny, posts an image of himself as Jesus. He ‘always chickens out‘.”

And yet, Malik asks, “isn’t this what evil is? A projection on to the world not of overbearing and large intent, but smallness and fear?”

Evil creeps up on you, she writes, “because it’s hard for the human brain to encounter evil in ludicrous form, and still recognize it as such.”

“That’s why you ask how such crimes were allowed to happen in the past,” she says.

Composed of “frivolity and nonchalance and fragility, as well as relentlessness and insatiability and brutality,”  evil “rarely arrives with the intent and identifying hallmarks of a villain. It arrives in the form of broken people, whose power lies in their unquenchable desire to make themselves whole no matter the consequences.”

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President Donald Trump spent Monday afternoon contradicting his own claims about an Iran peace deal, declaring he is “winning” a war and faces no pressure — just one day after saying a deal would be signed by Monday night.

On Sunday, the president reportedly told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo that he expected a deal with Iran “will be signed” by Monday night. But on Monday, Trump lashed out at Democrats (“TRAITORS ALL“), and insisted that “If a Deal happens under ‘TRUMP,’ it will guarantee Peace, Security, and Safety, not only for Israel and the Middle East, but for Europe, America, and everywhere else.” No mention of a deal being signed imminently.

In fact, Trump appeared to suggest he was in no rush to sign a deal.

“I read the Fake News saying that I am under ‘pressure’ to make a Deal. THIS IS NOT TRUE! I am under no pressure whatsoever, although, it will all happen, relatively quickly!”

He also insisted that he is not going to let Democrats “rush the United States into making a Deal that is not as good as it could have been.”

Meanwhile, as CBS News reports, Iran “said Monday that it has no plans to attend peace talks in Pakistan with President Trump’s top three negotiators, including Vice President JD Vance, as Tehran balks at what it considers ‘unreasonable and unrealistic demands’ by the White House.”

READ MORE: Why a Democratic Senate Takeover Has Become a ‘Real Possibility’: NYT

In his posts, the president compared the length of his war in Iran with World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War, in an effort to suggest his war is being executed in a judicious manner and insisting that he is “winning.”

Trump claimed that his war is being “perfectly executed, on the scale of Venezuela, just a bigger, more complex operation.” And he claimed, “I am properly and judiciously using our Military to solve problems left to us by others of far less understanding or competence.”

“I’m winning a War, BY A LOT, things are going very well,” he insisted, stating that “our Military has been amazing,” while lashing out at “the Fake News, like The Failing New York Times, the absolutely horrendous and disgusting Wall Street Journal, or the now almost defunct, fortunately, Washington Post, you would actually think we are losing the War,” he said.

While claiming that the “enemy is confused, because they get these same Media ‘reports,'” Trump hailed what he claimed was successful “Regime Change.”

“The Anti-America Fake News Media is rooting for Iran to win, but it’s not going to happen, because I’m in charge! Just like these unpatriotic people used every ounce of their limited strength to fight me in the Election, they continue to do so with Iran. The result will be the same — It already is!”

Critics slammed the president’s comments.

“This is a war he started to: – distract from the Epstein files – make money from manipulating markets – boost profits for his oil donors – as an excuse to give his family lucrative military contracts,” wrote organizer and healthcare advocate Melanie D’Arrigo. “His tantrums always need context.”

Jonah Allon, deputy communications director for New York Governor Kathy Hochul, wrote, “amazing this whole counter-messaging effort is happening now.” He said, “there was never going to be a communications strategy that could have sold this hideously unpopular war, but one really is struck by the sloth and lack of coordination since trump announced the strikes in late february.”

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