As champagne flowed at back-to-back parties across Washington for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner this weekend, some members of Donald Trump’s cabinet will have been anxiously checking their phones.
Trump has now fired four cabinet secretaries – three in the past month – with talk of another purge looming within days as a frustrated president lashes out at those around him.
The labour Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, was shown the door last week amid a string of scandals, including an alleged affair with her bodyguard. She was followed by the navy secretary, John Phelan, who was fired on Wednesday after months of infighting at the Pentagon.
Their sackings were preceded by those of the attorney general, Pam Bondi, and, last month, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem – all devoted loyalists who ultimately failed to satisfy the president’s impossible demands.
They will not be the last. Several cabinet members are rumoured to be on borrowed time as the war with Iran drags Trump’s administration into a quagmire, sending petrol prices soaring and his poll numbers into freefall. “There’s blood in the water,” one Maga consultant said at an embassy party last week. “The word is: he’s pissed and looking for people to blame.”
Until now, the president had appeared reluctant to dismiss his closest lieutenants, unwilling to give a scalp to Democrats or the media. But the latest flurry of firings suggests a return to the revolving-door chaos of his first term, when Trump fired cabinet members and close aides at will.
“Trump puts everybody in the woodchipper before it’s over…[Even] the people closest to him,” said a post on X by former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who famously survived only 10 days during Trump’s first term. “Nobody is safe. Nobody has ever been safe. It’s not personal. It’s just who he is.”
Among those next in the firing line is the FBI’s director, Kash Patel, whose stewardship of the top US law enforcement agency has been a source of concern inside the White House for months.
Trump was reported to be furious at footage of Patel downing beers in the locker room with the gold medal-winning US men’s ice hockey team at the Winter Olympics in Milan in February. Patel used the taxpayer-funded FBI jet for his jaunt to Italy, the latest in a series of alleged personal trips, including a hunting excursion to Texas, a golfing weekend in Scotland and a flight to Pennsylvania for a performance by his girlfriend, country music star Alexis Wilkins.
The FBI director’s troubles were compounded by a recent report in the Atlantic detailing Patel’s alleged heavy drinking and frequent absences from work. In a telling incident, the article recounted that, when Patel was unable to log in to an internal FBI computer system earlier this month, he panicked, calling aides to announce that he had been fired by the White House.
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Patel has denied the allegations and sued the Atlantic for defamation, lashing out at the “fake news mafia” in a press conference last week. But one FBI official told the magazine that everyone at the bureau was “just waiting for the word” that Patel had been sacked.
Other vulnerable cabinet names include the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard. The defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, could also carry the can for the disastrous Iran campaign, despite Trump’s declarations of “total victory”.
Those in danger have few allies inside a White House riven by personal feuds, with officials united only in their loyalty to Trump himself.
“They hate each other,” said one source close to the White House. “Everyone is briefing against each other all the time. They’re all trying to avoid Trump’s eye and push someone else under the bus.”
Poll after poll now confirms that Trump is in deep political trouble. An AP-Norc survey last week put the president’s approval rating at a record low of 33%.
His rating on the economy was even worse, falling to 30%. Only 32% of Americans said they approved of Trump’s handling of the war with Iran, while 72% said that the country was going in the wrong direction.
Republicans already feared a landslide defeat in November’s midterm elections, when the control of Congress is back up for grabs. But concern is growing among Grand Old party (GOP) operatives that an increasingly unchained and volatile Trump could do lasting damage to it.
Trump’s recent attacks on the pope – denounced as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy” – coupled with a social media post showing the president as a Christlike figure, healing a sick man, have prompted widespread outrage and created another headache for Republicans seeking re-election.
Trump’s standoff with the Vatican places particular strain on the man who hopes to replace him as president. The vice-president, JD Vance – a convert to Catholicism, who has courted the GOP’s religious base before an expected White House run in 2028 – was ushered out to criticise Pope Leo XIV earlier this month.
To widespread incredulity, Vance urged the pontiff “to be careful when he talks about matters of theology”, prompting criticism that he had chosen his political master over his spiritual guide. Leo responded that he had “no fear of the Trump administration”.
Defeat for Republicans in November could see the rest of Trump’s second term mired in a third impeachment, over Iran, and endless Democrat investigations, while candidates vying for the 2028 GOP nomination attempt to distance themselves from him.
One theory, also floated by Scaramucci, is that Trump would rather see a Democrat take back the presidency in 2028 than face the indignity of irrelevance. The suggestion has quietly gained traction in Maga circles that, rather than anoint a political heir, Trump could take his devoted base with him when he leaves the White House, wrecking the Maga succession altogether.
“I do buy that. I think he would like to leave the stage showing Republicans: ‘You were nothing before I came along and you’re nothing now that I’ve gone,’” said one Maga operative close to the White House.
“He wants to be the last great Republican president of his lifetime. That's the way he thinks.”
Photographs by Pacific Press, Rebecca Blackwell, Andrew Harnik, Allison Robbert, Kevin Dietsch, Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images, AP