Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made nearly identical observations on Thursday about the demographic pattern of Donald Trump’s cabinet dismissals, with McBride predicting that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will be the next senior official removed from her post given what the Democrat described as a presidential pattern of exclusively firing women.
McBride told MeidasTouch reporter Pablo ManrÃquez: “All of them deserve to be fired. I’m supporting the impeachment of Pete Hegseth because obviously right now we are engaged in a reckless war of choice that he was a primary driver of. But we know this president. He only fires women, so my guess is Tulsi Gabbard.”
Ocasio-Cortez offered a nearly identical framing when asked the same question by ManrÃquez: “Is he out of women? That seems to be his pattern right now. Trump only seems to have the capability to fire female secretaries. If you’re a man in the Trump administration, it seems that they reward misconduct.”
The claim has a factual foundation that requires some qualification: among the notable departures from the Trump administration since January 2025 are former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, and most recently Navy Secretary John Phelan, meaning men have indeed been removed alongside women during the same period.
The White House responded to McBride’s comments with an attack on her personal identity rather than a substantive defence of the dismissal record, with spokesperson Taylor Rogers saying “Rep. McBride doesn’t know what a woman is,” a retort that reflects the administration’s ongoing effort to keep McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress, at the centre of a culture war narrative rather than engage with the substance of the personnel critique.
Gabbard’s position has been the subject of speculation for several weeks, driven partly by bipartisan scrutiny from Senate Intelligence Committee members about her presence during an FBI search of a Fulton County, Georgia elections office, and partly by ongoing questions about alleged delays in forwarding a whistleblower complaint to Congress that lawmakers from both parties argue should have been transmitted more promptly.
The White House issued a public statement of confidence in Gabbard after the initial media speculation about her status, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying Trump had “full confidence” in the DNI, a formulation that Trump himself reinforced when directly asked about her job security, saying “I thought she did a good job yesterday” after she appeared before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.
McBride is one of eight Democrats co-sponsoring articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, with Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona having filed the articles accusing Hegseth of committing war crimes, mishandling sensitive information, and overseeing what the resolution describes as an unauthorised war against Iran that endangered US service members.
The broader pattern the Democrats are attempting to establish is one that frames Trump’s cabinet as operating in a loyalty dynamic where male officials suspected of serious misconduct are retained while female officials who displease the president on political grounds are dismissed, a framing that serves the party’s electoral strategy going into the November midterms even if the actual record of dismissals is more mixed than the pure gender narrative suggests.
