Grabby President Donald Trump is no kind of feminist, but he likes to point to his hiring and promotion of women to silence criticism of both his misogynist policies and personal conduct. His White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is actually the first woman to have the job.
But the Guardian points out that during his second term, there is one common characteristic share by most of those he has jettisoned from his administration.
“In the space of just a few months, half of his eight female cabinet officials have either resigned or been fired. All have been replaced by men,” reports the Guardian. “Several other women in his administration have also departed, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.”
The women are fleeing so fast that on Friday, Trump was forced to deny claims that he was even mulling replacing Wiles. “She’s gonna be here for a long time,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that numerous top male officials, including Trump’s goof–prone defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who has endangered soldiers by sharing military developments and plans on Signal chat, and threatening to embarrass the nation by broadcasting the live feed of shooting a paraplegic in a wheelchair, remains in his post, as does the allegedly drunken and mouthy FBI director Kash Patel.
White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia and her overblown resume were only the latest female casualties, having been fired just five days after taking the job. This short tenure even beat the record of Anthony Scaramucci, who previously held the post of White House communications director only 11 days in 2017.
“In terms of firings, the first domino to fall was former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, who was the face of Trump’s mass deportation campaign until she was unceremoniously sacked on 5 March,” reports the Guardian. “Her tenure was plagued by controversy, in large part amid national uproar over federal immigration enforcement operations that killed two US citizens in Minneapolis.”
Next fell former attorney general and Trump loyalist Pam Bondi, who was ousted in April after she “failed to sufficiently prosecute his political enemies,” reports the guardian. Bondi had outed herself as “a hopeless partisan” when she refused to open an investigation into the misuse of the Signal messaging app by top intelligence officials. But her mishandling of the Department of Justice’s long-awaited release of the Epstein files, and her exaggerated claims that the administration would be releasing previously unseen information pertaining to Epstein was a blow to Trump’s MAGA base — which was hungering for Democrats to be roped into the Epstein drama as Trump promised.
Former labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer stepped down in April, after a Department of Labor inspector general investigation led to a series of allegations of misconduct, including an affair with a subordinate and boozing on the job. She was replaced by another man, Keith Sonderling. Patel, who faces his own widescale allegations of intoxication and absence, however, remains FBI director, reports the Guardian.
Similarly, Tulsi Gabbard was forced from her position as Trump’s national intelligence director after being sidelined after testifying to Congress that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon — in direct contradiction to Trump’s argument for attacking Iran. Trump’s hugely unpopular war lingers to this day.
“Gabbard was replaced on an acting basis by Bill Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no previous experience in the intelligence sphere, and eventually by Jay Clayton,” reports the Guardian.
And another abrupt departure is Trump’s ambassador Kimberly after weeks of reports that she sought payment from a Trump donor in exchange for access to the administration.
“If you’re a man in the Trump administration, it seems that they reward misconduct,” the Guardian reports Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) saying.
“I’m for women. I’m for men. I’m for everyone,” the Guardian notes Trump saying in a 2018 interview. But not everyone gets to stick around.