One Trump adviser would not confirm that their ranking of Bondi stemmed from her handling of the Epstein files. This adviser declined to answer follow-up questions about Bondi because Epstein was not something they were willing to discuss over text. Instead, they replied with the flush-faced emoji (😳) and shared their list:
“Worst, Bondi,” they begin. “2/ Bondi. 3/ Bondi. 4/ Bondi. 5/ HegsethRFKTulsiNoem.”
The bundled choice for number five elucidated something else I’ve been picking up on lately: This time around, the obvious incompetence of many top officials actually works to keep any sustained pressure off of any one cabinet secretary or agency head. It ends up working in everyone’s interest if there are multiple dumpster fires going at once, rather than one big one.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security who oversees ICE—or at least plays the role on TV—has not escaped notice, either. The president’s “biggest vulnerabilities are Lutnick and Noem, followed by RFK,” a senior administration official tells me, without elucidating why.
Under Noem’s tenure running DHS, Trump’s polling numbers on immigration, once one of his strengths, have plummeted, with more than half of those polled saying he has gone too far, according to the latest New York Times/Siena poll.
Then there’s health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently made an announcement with the president about an unproven link between the active ingredient in Tylenol and autism spectrum disorders. (That’s the one which resulted in the iconic Trump quote, “Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.”)
Another Trump adviser described the cabinet hot seat as “a constantly moving target,” but they were confident with Lutnick at number one, and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at number two.
Gabbard’s good will has ebbed and flowed, a third Trump adviser said. She had been on shakier ground in the early months of the administration, they said, but the president is “over the moon with Tulsi” because of how she’s handled the release of various declassified materials. In several cases, Gabbard has rolled out material that was already in the public domain or not previously digitized. Earlier this year, she released tens of thousands of pages on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Sr., and Martin Luther King Jr. These releases, however, lacked any major revelations, as did her selective declassifications of documents around the origin of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
