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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