‘Only just the beginning’: Mass firings loom inside Donald Trump’s White House ‘snake pit’

Insiders have revealed US President Donald Trump could be about to resort to some vicious measures as a major scandal grows.

OPINION

There have been so many brilliant movies and TV series about American politics over the years.

All The President’s Men, especially if you can follow all that parking garage mumbling and typewriter adjacent chain-smoking and The West Wing, if the rat-a-tat, power striding while talking doesn’t make you faintly car sick.

But the show that best sums up the current situation in the White House is obvious: Mean Girls.

Oh my god Becky, did you see his Yemen chat?

A week on since it was confirmed that the Trump administration’s top officials are officially a confederacy of dunces, having accidentally included a leading journalist in a group chat about war plans, the fallout continues – a sentence I take immense pleasure in writing.

While publicly, Trump et al are busily trying to distract the public by suddenly waving and yelling about letting The Don have a third term (which is prohibited by the constitution), behind the scenes, it’s a right old snake pit.

Mr Trump might be doing his usual schtick of “flooding the zone” (the strategy put in place by former adviser and perma-rumpled Steve Bannon, a man who always looks like he might have just been hauled out of a barrel of herring after an all-night aquavit bender), but things could not be messier or more Regina George-approved right now, according to insiders.

What will Donald Trump do next? Picture: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

It’s all a bit Mean Girls. Picture: Supplied

Already this week it is looking increasingly like “First Buddy” (shudder) Elon Musk is on the way out the door after a state race in Wisconsin that was essentially a referendum on his unchecked power delivered the Republicans a stunning loss.

In a perfect example of how Trumpworld relationships seem to go, the world’s richest man has gone from bunking in the White House and playing intern fetch on the South Lawn to being pretty much publicly dumped by the President.

Methinks one half of a BFF necklace is now going begging.

This is only just the beginning.

We are fast approaching an exciting first of this, Mr Trump’s second time of idly sizing up the National Mall for a modest nine-hole course – the first firing is nearly upon us.

Or in other words, get out, loser.

Is the bromance over? Picture: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

But which of the dumb-dumbs that Mr Trump has hand-picked to leave nuclear schematics in a Wendy’s is for the chopping block first?

There is plenty of money riding on the honour going to National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the guy who added one of America’s most respected journalists (The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) to a Signal group chat which also included a cadre of the country’s top leaders, including Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

None of them clocked that Mr Goldberg had been invited as they planned the recent bombing of Yemen.

At least they didn’t do their war planning via Instagram DMs, I suppose.

US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz speaks with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. Picture: Ludovic Marin/AFP

Signalgate is the first Trump scandal that has penetrated the American public’s consciousness, with Republican politicians getting a pasting over it in recent town hall meetings.

And so back in Washington, it’s Mean Girls time as various names jockey to find someone to take the blame.

No matter who is the first of the Trump administration’s square-jawed double-digit IQers who will walk the plank first, the bloodletting seems about to begin.

In a private meeting last week, according to Politico, Vice President JD Vance urged Mr Trump to give Mr Waltz the old heave-ho for having given the American people an unfortunately crystal clear view of the buffoons pulling the levers of power behind the curtain, Wizard of Oz style.

The bloodletting seems about to begin. Picture: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The only thing currently saving Mr Waltz’s bacon and job for now is Mr Trump’s aversion to giving the media “a scalp”, an ally close to the White House told Politico.

That said, don’t get too used to hearing Mr Waltz’s Floridian drawl in the Oval Office, with another insider reportedly predicting, “he’ll be gone in a couple of weeks”.

But his ousting could be just the beginning, with a former Trumpworld insider predicting that Mr Trump could be in the market for a new Vice President soon too.

Know anyone who is really a superlative boot licker and might enjoy prettily wrapping Bed Bath & Beyond gift baskets to be sent to the Kremlin?

Anthony Scaramucci, who very briefly served as the Communications Director during Mr Trump’s first term, has already predicted that the President will boot out Mr Vance.

Anthony Scaramucci and Donald Trump. Picture: Twitter

One thing that Signalgate made painfully clear was that behind closed doors, things were less chummy between POTUS and his Veep than their recent Oval Office double act of attacking Volodymyr Zelensky might suggest.

“I predict JD Vance will go the way of Mike Pence,” Mr Scaramucci told CNN, his theory being he thinks Mr Vance is “probably annoying” Mr Trump right now.

He argued that Mr Vance’s “sycophantic” approach to Mr Trump will backfire and that “people mistake this about [Trump], I don’t think he likes the obsequiousness stuff”.

The real test of Mr Vance’s “full capitulation”, according to Mr Scaramucci, will be if the Hillbilly Elegy author shaves off his beard, something the President is known to hate.

There are fears Donald Trump is planning a White House firing spree. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Vice President JD Vance – and his beard – could be in the firing line. Picture: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Meanwhile, Mr Trump is loudly failing to throw his backing behind Mr Vance as the party’s heir apparent to run in 2028, assuming he doesn’t follow through on his threats to refuse to move his number one tanning bed out of the White House when his second term is up.

Just imagine what else Mr Vance might have said in his other group chats or in his personal Burn Book.

Another Trump appointee increasingly on the naughty list is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jnr, with White House aides already leaking about what a schmozzle things are under his leadership.

“It’s a mess over there,” one such insider has told Axios.

That’s not so fetch.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jnr, Robert F Kennedy Jnr, seen on-board the Trump private plane, eating McDonalds. Picture: Donald Trump/X

What no one seems to disagree on – someone will be going, because if there is one thing Mr Trump is known to enjoy, besides anything and everything deep-fried and Ayn Rand books on tape, it’s firing people.

The 78-year-old clearly views staffers the way Henry VIII viewed wives.

Readily expendable.

Or maybe it’s more like musical chairs and he never stops hovering his finger over the stop button.

It’s not so fetch after all. Picture: Supplied

His first term was characterised by a revolving door of aides, advisers and cabinet secretaries that never stopped spinning, a whirling dervish of chronic dysfunction.

In the first 12 months after his 2017 inauguration he lost 16 top people, based on a tally kept by The New York Times.

Overall, during his first four years in office, he had a 92 per cent staff turnover rate, according to the Brookings Institute – far higher than any other President going back to at least Ronald Reagan. (Jimmy Carter kept all of his staff sweet by regularly organising massage trains in the China Room or bringing his guitar and strumming Kumbaya when Iran hostage negotiations got a bit testy).

Maybe Mean Girls is the wrong movie analogy – maybe it’s more Gladiator. Bare knuckle, brutal fighting for survival with Donaldus Trumpius giving the thumbs up or thumbs down pronouncement from on high.

Those who are about to be sacked – and end up back on conservative breakfast telly – I salute you.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Only just the beginning’: Mass firings loom inside Donald Trump’s White House ‘snake pit’