It’s no secret that President Donald Trump keeps firing women.
We just said farewell to his five-day press secretary Katie Zacharia, Kristi Noem is suddenly on her third job after being fired from the fake job she was given after she was fired from her role as Homeland Security secretary, and former Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired after a supposedly poor performance.
White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, who was fired on Oct. 16.AP
None of this is a surprise, given the deep misogyny that pockmarks this administration. But while Trump keeps pushing women out the door, he’s overlooking some men who should really be out of their jobs—like, ASAP.
I’m not talking about men who are just stone-cold evil—you won’t find Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought on this list, because while he is undermining the whole federal government and destroying the administrative state, that’s literally what Trump hired him to do.
No, these are the bros who are bad at the job that Trump wants them to do, yet somehow keep hanging on.
First up, of course, is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is overseeing the war in Iran with the skill of an angry toddler stomping on his Legos because he’s not smart enough to stack one brick atop another.
The Iran war is now the very definition of a quagmire, and Hegseth seems to be lying about just how much of our munitions have been blown on this disaster. And how can you just not point and laugh at a dude who’s trying to get tough on leakers after his role in Signalgate? Remember “We are currently clean on OPSEC”—as in operational security?
Please stand by while I put all of my money on a Kalshi bet that there’s no world where Hegseth could define what “currently clean on OPSEC” even means from a technical standpoint.
And next we have FBI Director Kash Patel, who might be the most comically bad at his job of all of Trump’s motley crew.
Defense Secretary Pete HegsethAP
Not only has his own email been hacked, but the entire FBI has been hacked. And if there’s a major investigation happening, all he does is screw it up.
Patel is so openly incompetent that his own staffers told The Atlantic that he’s a drunk who never shows up for work and is so difficult to wake you up from a drunken stupor that they requested breaching equipment—like SWAT teams get—to break down the door.
And then there’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has been in over his head from the very start. Remember when he tried to blame plane crashes on former President Joe Biden about a month after he left office?
Meanwhile, his big plan to fix shortages of air traffic controllers seems to be hiring video gamers and rushing them through training. Somehow this doesn’t seem like it will fix the dangerous mess he created. And under his oversight, or lack thereof, plane accidents just keep happening.
Duffy also took a seven-month vacation to film his family roadtrip, which resulted in nothing but a crappy YouTube show. How do you screw up the promotional grifting opportunity that badly? How could you not at least land this thing on Fox News?
About the only incompetent man who has gotten shoved out the door is “Eagle” Ed Martin, but he got a very soft landing after screwing up as interim U.S. attorney, after which he was rewarded with becoming the pardons and weaponization attorney.
Transportation Secretary Sean DuffyAP
But then Martin started screwing up there, including getting way out over his skis and helping out Alex Jones without Justice Department approval and stalking New York Attorney General Letitia James, so he was demoted again.
Finally, he was gently shuffled out the door a few months later.
So who will be the first out the door after the midterms—the obligatory sacrificial lamb? Likely not Hegseth, since Trump loves his boorish, racist pugnaciousness and someone new might actually tell him the truth about how the war is going.
Duffy, by comparison to his peers, is relatively neutered and harmless—if you overlook the people getting killed in plane crashes on his watch, which is a thing we know doesn’t move the needle for Trump.
So it’s probably Patel, who will be allowed to resign to spend more time planning his wedding. Do you think his fake country singer girlfriend will sing at her own wedding?
I’m betting “hell yes.”
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