“You’re Fired!”
Long ago, President Trump shouted those words to decide winners and losers on the reality television show “The Apprentice.”
And during Trump’s first term, a historically high number of Cabinet officials were fired, resigned or pushed out. In his first term, he ran through four chiefs of staff. He sacked three national security advisers, his secretary of State, and his chief strategist.
Back then, Trump knew how to fire people. Now, Trump is making a show of refusing to fire anyone.
He gets a kick out of denying his critics the satisfaction of seeing him admit to making bad choices for top jobs. The result is a second-term version of “The Apprentice” in which Trump gets vindictive pleasure by firing no one.
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He is standing by failing Cabinet officials who are hurting him with voters ahead of the coming midterm elections. Fox polls have Trump’s disapproval near all-time highs among moderates (70 percent) and independents (78 percent). A majority of Americans — 54 percent — believe the country is worse off than it was a year ago.
But Trump still won’t say “You’re fired!”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently invited Trump to fire her when she blamed him for disastrous events, including the murder of American citizens by federal agents in Minnesota.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen [Miller],” Noem told Axios. Miller is Trump’s top homeland security advisor and deputy chief of staff. Fifty-Five percent of voters disapprove of how Noem’s agents have handled their search for people to deport, according to a Fox poll.
Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander whose rough conduct led to chaos in Minnesota, is second on the list for defenestration. He has been recalled from Minneapolis, but he still has a job in Trump’s administration. The only action Trump took against Bovino was to describe his reckless actions as evidence that Bovino is “a pretty ‘out-there’ kind of a guy, and in some cases that’s good, maybe it wasn’t good here!”
Also waiting on a pink slip is Attorney General Pam Bondi. She has damaged Trump with voters, making a bad situation worse by fumbling the release of the controversial Epstein Files.
Bond promised MAGA influencers an early peek at the files. She went on television to dramatically claim the files were “on her desk,” and about to be released. They weren’t. She also staged a dramatic release of binders labeled as “The Epstein Files.” It was a lie — the files she released contained mostly information previously made public.
Congress was forced to intervene. Then judges ordered Bondi’s Justice Department to release the materials. That was weeks ago. She has produced only a fraction while failing to comply with the law. And her mistakes made Trump himself look bad. One recent poll reported that her approval has fallen by 47 points.
Next up on the list waiting to be shown the door is Kash Patel, the FBI director. He is responsible for the insufficient investigation into the killings in Minnesota. And that is just the latest dropped ball. Trump’s most loyal voters previously had been upset over Patel’s questionable handling of the investigation into the assassination of conservative icon Charlie Kirk. Then there is attention to distracting questions about taxpayer-funded travel to see his girlfriend.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer also has an eye on the ‘Exit’ sign. She is accused by government watchdogs of drinking on the job, conducting an affair with a member of her security detail, and directing staff to schedule official travel around personal excursions, including a strip club and a Las Vegas resort. As Wonkette memorably summarized it: “Secretary of Labor Being Investigated for Knowing How to Party.”
Chavez-DeRemer may be hanging on to her job because she decorated the Labor Department’s building facing the Capitol with a massive banner of Trump’s face, evoking Soviet-era murals of Joseph Stalin.
Then there’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Once the world’s most famous spreader of vaccine misinformation, Kennedy has promoted conspiracy theories over decades of science-based research and test results. Now the Trump administration presides over the largest measles outbreak in the U.S. in 25 years. South Carolina, alone, has recorded 789 cases, surpassing West Texas’s outbreak that killed two children.
Kennedy’s involvement with a reporter who later wrote a tell-all book about their sex texts only adds to the farce.
Scandals in other administrations that led to firings now look like not much when compared to the list of offenders who remain in the Trump administration.
Let’s not forget the years-long right-wing media campaign to fire Lois Lerner, a mid-level IRS bureaucrat. Her wrongdoing amounted to reviewing the IRS status of conservative activist groups suspected of wrongly taking advantage of tax exemptions for non-political groups.
Reality television made Trump a star. It is also the prototype for today’s hellscape politics, featuring constant texting and videos from the administration. How fitting that Trump now has a reality star (Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy) and a former wrestling executive (Education Secretary Linda McMahon) in his Cabinet.
It’s amazing to turn on the TV and discover that today’s Trump just won’t say “You’re fired!”
