Donald Trump knows that his administration is in freefall, with the latest polls showing that the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with his policies.
But as we learned in the first Trump administration, the Donald will never accept blame for his falling approval ratings. Instead, he will likely start shuffling his cabinet in a desperate attempt to change the topic and give the appearance that he’s making a course correction.
That’s the word from The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire, who revealed this morning on MSNBC that at least two Trump appointees could be the first to get the axe.
With the Signalgate scandal getting worse by the day, host Joe Scarborough noted, “Those are headaches that the White House and the people that are working around president Trump just don’t need. And they seem to be rolling their eyes much in the same way that we were seeing during the transition, where they were angry at (Secretary of Defense Pete) Hegseth for not coming forward with information, with lawsuits, with all of these, with police reports, with all of these different things that they kept finding out he was a distraction during the transition.”
“He’s a distraction now, as you have said, and as you have reported and as I’ve reported, the White House felt like they had a pretty good run of it the first couple of months, and that was stopped by Hegseth and Signalgate,” Scarborough added.
“You’re right, during the transition there was a lot of frustration among Trump aides around Hegseth that he hadn’t been forthcoming,” Lemire concurred. “You just alluded to it, but Trump himself loved the guy. That’s what I was told repeatedly – ‘Hegseth’s my guy,’ Trump said. He loved him on Fox [News], he got to know him during the first term as he, as Hegseth championed some veterans causes. But what we’re seeing now is that Trump himself is starting to cool on Hegseth, at least somewhat.”
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is also on the hot seat, Lemire added.
“Waltz still remains the scapegoat in the building, even though by most objective measures what he did less dangerous, less of a national security risk than what Hegseth has done now more than once. But, Waltz, the suggestion is that he probably is also a short-timer on this administration, but right now, the focus is on Hegseth and the chaos at the Pentagon, which goes beyond the Signalgate chats, but also because really, we’ve seen some of his top aides go, his hand-picked guys to be around him – we just heard one of them say right now that he’s not sure which Pete Hegseth to believe in.”
If Trump’s poll numbers continue to fall, don’t be surprised if he dumps even more of his top advisers. After all, Trump cannot accept that he’s to blame for the chaos around him because he’s incapable of acknowledging that he’s been a failure his entire life.
