Mr. President! Let me start this Cabinet meeting by thanking you for hanging the moon and organizing the nation, and the universe, in such a perfect way. The moon looks great where you put it. Everything you touch turns to gold, unless you would prefer it to turn to brass.
Now that we have dispensed with the pleasantries, I do have a tiny question: Do you know that you are also allowed to fire men? Really, you are! Men are allowed to leave the Cabinet too.
As one of the last remaining women in this Cabinet, I felt compelled to ask. Not for me, of course. For my sisters!
I literally cannot think of a worse place to have a feminist awakening than as a member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, watching the departures of Pam Bondi but not Kash Patel, and Kristi Noem but not Pete Hegseth, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer but not Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Of course, that is not what this is. I would sooner die than have a feminist awakening. Obviously, I am aware of the patriarchy, but I have always believed that I could make it work for me, personally, if I just used the right hair products and smiled more.
I’m just wondering: Do I have a future here? I’m doing everything that everyone else is doing. I have a face. I have a jet. I have incompetence. I shower the president with praise at every Cabinet meeting. (See above.) But where is the ironclad job security, the sense that, no matter what I do, I am still an essential part of the team? Should I be drinking more? Snorkeling more? Both?
I will say I thought that it would be different when I agreed to serve. I thought, Well, this man has no respect for women. But he also has no respect for any type of person! I can build on that. “Put me in, Coach,” I said then.
Now there are just four of us left. I really thought that Tulsi’s willingness to conduct purges, peddle conspiracies, and cast doubt on the integrity of the last election would have endeared her to you more. But I also thought that about Pam.
Listen, if you were assembling a Cabinet purely on ability, none of us would be here. That’s the great thing bringing all of us here today: Whether we are male or female, old or young, white or nonwhite, the one thing that binds us is our shared absence of merit.
But if I were eliminating people for doing a bad job, I would certainly pick either the guy who is bringing back measles or the guy who is bringing back the flu—two distinct guys, each of whom is putting millions of lives at stake. If you spun me around (please do not spin me around; my hair is not equipped) in this room and I pointed at random, I would hit someone deserving of being fired. Or a chair. Or one of several models of a ballroom or an arch.
I know you have said, “No scalps.” Are you operating under the misapprehension that women don’t have scalps? This seems like the kind of thing you might believe. I don’t know anymore.
I’m no feminist. Obviously. I’m in the Trump Cabinet. But this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder about his outlook on the world! Not that we’re trying to list birth control as an environmentally noxious substance. Not the increased level of joking-but-not-joking about removing our right to vote, or having households all vote together under the man’s guidance. I know Pete Hegseth’s pastor knows what I’m talking about!
I’m indifferent to all of that. I’m talking about my own personal career here, and I do have to wonder if you’re holding the incompetent women in your Cabinet to the same standard as the incompetent men. Is this some sort of Women and Children First situation? Are you really going to wait for all of us to leave before anyone else is allowed to go?
I guess I just thought I would be safer here—that if I joined up, they wouldn’t come for me. I am not supposed to be the one under the bus. I’m supposed to be the one throwing other women there.
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