GIRL POWER

In Trump’s Cabinet, Women Are the Fall Guys

Perhaps Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Pam Bondi, and Kristi Noem are pioneers. Or perhaps they’re the first casualties in a broader purge that hasn’t yet reached its logical conclusion.

Opinion

Politics as theatre. Celebrity as currency. Wellness as religion. And power as the only real language in the room. Subscribe to PRIMAL SCREAM with Joanna Coles on Substack for exclusive news, reviews and commentary.

Three secretaries have been exiled from Trump’s Cabinet. All three are women. Two said they were leaving for “the private sector,” and one was shifted to a phony new job. All were replaced by white men. In a White House where chaos is a management philosophy, that detail lands with a thud. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer is the latest to go, dispatched despite North Korean–level flattery to Dear Leader. At a Cabinet meeting last August, she gushed about Trump’s “big, beautiful face,” inviting him to see it on a banner at the Department of Labor. He smirked and called her a “gem.” Eight months later, the gem has lost its luster. Loyalty, as ever, is no guarantee of survival. Chavez-DeRemer joins Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi in the dustbin of history. All three were flawed in executing their jobs, but then again, incompetence is hardly a distinguishing feature in this Cabinet of blunders. So why are the women the ones going? If performance were the metric, the line might look very different.

Is this sexism, or simply the random culling of a deeply unserious administration? Click through to PRIMAL SCREAM to read Joanna Coles’ full analysis.