Top aide's cancer diagnosis may have unleashed Trump's firing spree: analyst

Donald Trump has fired two high-profile Cabinet members over the last month, and it could be because a crucial aide is absent, a political analyst has claimed.

Both the Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi were shown the door in quick succession, with the latter fired by Trump earlier this week. Trump has turned over fewer staff members in his second term as president, but an increase in high-profile firings may be because the aide keeping him in check is less present than usual.

Slate columnist Jill Filipovic suggested Susie Wiles' absence may have given Trump free rein to clean house, as he does not have any opposition to firing members of his administration.

Filipovic wrote, "The second Trump administration has seen far less churn than the first. That’s in part because, this time around, Trump appointed a slate of hardcore loyalists. Those include Noem and Bondi, who bent over backward to serve the president, even when it meant bending the law, too.

"And the lack of churn has also been credited to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who by most accounts has enforced significant restraint from a famously chaotic leader. Wiles, though, was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and while she has remained in her role, her influence may not be quite as forceful as it once was."

Filipovic went on to note several other high-profile staff members had been ousted from their positions in recent weeks, with Border Patrol head Greg Bovino dismissed in late January.

"Even after all of that, he was simply moved back to his previous role in California and allowed to quietly retire," Filipovic noted. "National Security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added the editor in chief of the Atlantic to a private Signal chat about bombing Yemen; he was removed from his national security post, but made ambassador to the United Nations.

"Other men who have made colossal errors have retained their posts. Pete Hegseth is the one who decided to send war plans and other sensitive classified information to his colleagues, his wife, and his brother on Signal in the first place, and he remains in charge of the Department of Defense (and continues to insist on calling it, ridiculously, the Department of War).

"Stephen Miller is one of the administration’s most odious members and a near-constant source of public embarrassment; he was also, by most accounts, the one actually pulling the strings at Noem’s Department of Homeland Security and setting the administration’s immigration policies, including spreading the lie that Alex Pretti, the U.S. citizen who was gunned down in the street by ICE agents, was an 'assassin' planning a 'massacre.'

"And if Miller is the administration’s most odious, FBI Director Kash Patel is its most buffoonish."