SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
In less than two months, President Trump has fired three members of his cabinet, and all of them are women. First, it was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, then Attorney General Pam Bondi and finally, yesterday, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. For more on this sudden spade of ousters, we are joined by NPR senior political correspondent Tamara Keith. Hey, Tam.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: Aside from the fact they're all women, what do these high-profile cabinet departures have in common?
KEITH: Well, Noem and Chavez-DeRemer were facing questions about misconduct or misuse of public resources. But with Noem, there were also performance concerns. Immigration had been one of Trump's strongest issues, and now it is one of his worst. After the deaths of two citizens at the hands of federal agents in Minnesota, Republicans and Democrats alike called for her to resign. Members of Congress also scrutinized the way she spent money at the Department of Homeland Security, including on disaster relief and flashy ad campaigns starring Noem. So both of these cabinet members were becoming a headache for Trump.
DETROW: And what about Attorney General Pam Bondi?
KEITH: She didn't have the personal scandals, but she mishandled the Epstein files, drawing more attention to something President Trump just wanted to go away. And also, she failed to deliver on the retribution campaign Trump was seeking against his enemies like former FBI Director James Comey. Being Trump's attorney general is nearly an impossible job because of his vocal desire to direct the work of the Department of Justice, which is supposed to have some measure of independence. And given Trump's focus on immigration, the same is true at the Department of Homeland Security. It's hard to keep Trump happy with either agency, which was also the case in his first term.
DETROW: Right. There were so many firings in his first term. It was one of the defining characteristics of his administration. This time was supposed to be different, right?
KEITH: Yes. First-term Trump was really a category all its own. By the end of his second year, Trump had fired or otherwise lost seven cabinet members. That is those who are in the line of presidential succession. And then there were also all those high-profile staff firings, too. It was all very dramatic.
But this time around, Trump was careful to surround himself with loyalists, none of the old-school Republicans who saw themselves as guardrails on his impulses. I spoke with a senior White House official about this back in mid-February, and he told me there wasn't nearly as much backstabbing this time around and, generally, everyone liked each other. And then 2 1/2 weeks later, Noem was out, and it's been this steady stream ever since. So I called up Katie Dunn Tenpas, who studies turnover at the Brookings Institution, to ask what was going on.
KATIE DUNN TENPAS: And it's almost as though they held it together the first year. But then the cracks started, and Trump went back to his old ways and is starting to fire people.
KEITH: First-term Trump still holds the record for modern presidents, dating back to Reagan, but three ousters in less than two months is a lot.
DETROW: What's your best sense of what this means for Trump politically?
KEITH: You know, these firings have made somewhat less of a splash than the cabinet departures in his first term. In part, that's because all of these have happened during the war with Iran, which is consuming much of the political oxygen. And Trump may not be getting any relief from changing things up in his cabinet. Tenpas told me there's a large body of political science that finds that replacing staff doesn't really alter the president's approval rating. And a reminder, this president's approval rating is at the lowest place it's been in either of his terms.
DETROW: That is NPR's Tamara Keith. Thank you so much for talking to us.
KEITH: You're welcome, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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