This isn’t what you think it is, Atlantic. Dear Lord, it misses the mark and buries a key point about the “scapegals,” the women President Trump has fired during his second presidency. The trail of female carnage is massive, though the president hasn’t fired many male officials. You can see where this is going — Trump is a sexist. The headline blows that point up: the man has hired scores of women for top administrative positions. What the hell is even this piece, other than whining about Trump?
The best part is the admission that the president was right to fire most of these people.
Katie Zacharia essentially lied about her resume; Pam Bondi created a mess at DOJ with her lie about having the Epstein client list on her desk, which set off a public relations nightmare that this White House is still in the throes of; Kristi Noem’s handling of the ICE raids and her lambasting of Alex Pretti as a domestic terrorist were off base; Kimberley Guilfoyle’s AmEx circus as ambassador to Greece, a job I thought was screw-up-proof, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s turbulent tenure as labor secretary. Is this a serious piece? Chavez-DeRemer had staff outings to strip clubs; she allegedly drank on the job; her husband was barred from the government building over sexual harassment allegations, and the former secretary allegedly had an affair with a member of her security detail. Call me crazy — but these are fireable offenses (via The Atlantic):
The NYT wrote this story a month ago when Guilfoyle left. Now its' Ashley Parker at The Atlantic. Again, the media gave Trump zero credit for hiring this many women, but now calls him sexist because they're leaving/being fired. Also, there is something distinctly anti-feminist about this argument. Is Parker arguing Katie Zacharia should have stayed on the job merely because she was a woman? Or that Kristi Noem - who every Democrat in Washington DEMANDED be fired or impeached - deserved to stay based on her genetalia? Or that Trump should have looked the other way at Guilfoyle's blatant corruption? You can't have it both ways.
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) November 11, 2026
Including Wiles, Trump has fired or pushed out at least half a dozen top women this term, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia. (Zacharia announced the departure of Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle from the White House podium—the only news she would share, it turned out—a mere three days before she, too, was summarily dismissed.) Other senior women have also left—Karoline Leavitt, who preceded Zacharia as press secretary, and Harmeet Dhillon, who ran the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, among others—albeit on their own terms. Most of the senior women who were forced out have since been replaced by men.
When charges of misogyny pop up against Trump, as they have with regularity in both of his terms, his defenders are quick to claim that he is an equal-opportunity offender who is just as likely to attack, say, a white male journalist as he is a female reporter of color. But this time, counterexamples are hard to find. One of the few senior men to have been jettisoned is Mike Waltz, Trump’s first national security adviser, who was binned after less than four months, following his Signalgate mishap….
Zacharia—who failed the California bar yet repeatedly referred to herself as a lawyer—was fired after five days on the job following a disastrous debut at the podium. (That’s less than half of a Full Scaramucci—the nickname for the 11-day tenure of Anthony Scaramucci, a fleeting supernova of a communications director during Trump’s first term.) Noem, meanwhile, presided over the killing of two Americans by immigration-enforcement officers in Minneapolis and spent taxpayer dollars on glitzy commercials, all while allegedly deferring to her rumored boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski (both have repeatedly denied an affair), to handle much of the Department of Homeland Security’s day-to-day operations. Bondi, for her part, seemed to view the top Justice post as that of Trump’s personal fixer. (Ironically, Trump’s ultimate frustration was not that she went too far in doing his bidding, but that she didn’t go far enough.) And Chavez-DeRemer, who left earlier this year, did so amid allegations of drinking on the job and an affair with a member of her security detail, as well as accusations from at least two female staff members that her husband had sexually assaulted them. (Chavez-DeRemer’s husband has denied the accusations through an attorney, and the police investigation of the reports has since been closed.)
“Like I said: These records are hard to defend.”
No, there is no defense. All of these women deserved their exits. Susie Wiles is an exception, though that’s a changing of the guard amid a brutal, historic midterm drubbing. It happens, though Wiles was reportedly leaving anyway; Trump just accelerated the timeline after the blowout loss.
Using women who committed offenses worthy of termination to make some shoddy point about why men aren’t fired enough in Trump’s orbit, or something, is a choice. Again, it’s whining. What else is new?