Donald Trump relished delivering two devastating words — “You’re fired” — in his role on the reality show “The Apprentice,” and years later, he repeated them incessantly on the campaign trail, much to the delight of his audiences. But the president has a dirty little secret: He does not like confrontation. In real life, he prefers to delegate the unpleasant task to an underling. 

This emerged as a pattern during his first term, when personnel churn was a constant. Trump often had his chiefs of staff — there were several — deliver the bad news, and sometimes he would even fire people on social media rather than confront in person. Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, famously learned of his dismissal from his staff via a printed tweet after returning from a diplomatic trip to Africa. FBI Director James Comey saw the news of his firing on TV news reports. Once the person was gone, Trump often publicly insulted them, portraying them as “lowlifes,” “nutjobs” and worse, never seeming to realize the glaring contradiction — that a man with his alleged business savvy should have had better judgment than to hire such people in the first place. According to a Brookings analysis, the president had a 92% turnover rate among his “A team” during his first administration, the highest of any president in history.

Trump’s second term has been much more stable. Where before Trump had hired qualified people — aside from his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner — recommended by experienced Washington hands, this time around he has surrounded himself with nothing but the most loyal sycophants. As a result, there has been much less personnel drama. Still, there have been a few notable departures. 

The first was the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. After a bromance budded between the billionaire and Trump during the transition period, when Musk essentially moved into Mar-a-Lago, the president appointed him to head the Department of Government Efficiency and take a chainsaw to the federal government. Then there was a rupture in the relationship and Musk departed, although they seem to have mended fences. Since then, Trump has only fired a few people: Attorney General Pam Bondi, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle. (The latter three “resigned” under duress.) On Friday afternoon, after only a few days on the job and widespread criticism of her tenure, Trump dismissed White House press secretary Katie Zacharia.

The White House has insisted it’s entirely coincidental that all the firings have been women. But as the New York Times reported on Wednesday, “In many instances, the female officials who departed appeared to have failed some kind of loyalty test to Mr. Trump.” (You know how women are.) The departures of these women isn’t because none of the administration’s men have been implicated in misconduct or corrupt dealings. To the contrary: Some of Trump’s male officials and staffers are stunningly incompetent and dishonest, but their behavior has either been overlooked or rewarded with promotions and transfers. 

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So when reports surfaced that another high-profile female staffer may be on the chopping block, it would have come as no surprise — if it weren’t for the fact that the woman in question is the single most powerful female in the administration. 

Susie Wiles has earned the distinction of being Trump’s longest tenured chief of staff, and with good reason: She has managed to stay on the president’s good side by enabling him and never telling him what he doesn’t want to hear. She has admitted that herself, saying, “These seminal moments where you have to go in and tell the president what he wants to do is unconstitutional or will cost lives. I don’t have that.” 

One would certainly think that would guarantee her job security. But ahead of the monumental loss Republicans are expected to endure during the upcoming midterm elections, Trump is reportedly raging — and looking for a scapegoat. Apparently, it’s going to be Wiles. According to recent reports, the president has been calling around to friends to see what they think of his chief of staff — a common precursor to a Trump firing. According to POLITICO, plenty of people have their knives out for Wiles, with one person close to the White House saying, “She’s burned a lot of people.” 

This, though, is an occupational hazard for any Trump chief of staff. It’s also not unusual for turnover following a midterm election. But the GOP is facing what looks to be a massive loss, attributed to the president’s historically low approval ratings among the American people. Since Wiles, who guided Trump to his historic 2024 comeback, has also been tasked with doing the same in 2026 — along with her partners James Blair and Chris LaCivita — she is in the presidential crosshairs, even though there is little room to address Trump’s overwhelming unpopularity because he won’t listen to anyone. 

The big question now centers on Wiles’ replacement. POLITICO reported there are three likely candidates. One is Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a fierce Trump loyalist known most recently for spending as much time as possible with the president, feeding him memes and ideas on big white poster boards. Another is Kevin McCarthy, the former House Speaker who once told an aide to fill a jar with only the red Starburst candies for him to give to the president because he had noticed that Trump preferred them, earning him the presidential sobriquet “My Kevin.” Then there is Stephen Miller, the notorious senior adviser of everything.

The choice of Pulte or McCarthy would signal a continuation of current practices, albeit with less discipline and adult behavior in the White House, which may be inevitable no matter who wins the job. Pulte is dramatically unqualified, but since Trump once made him acting director of national intelligence, that distinction is obviously not an impediment.

McCarthy is one of the most incompetent and ignorant leaders in GOP history, but this is likely a plus, since Trump likes people who are just like him. If anyone expects that the president is looking for someone who is stronger than Wiles, the fact that McCarthy is being considered should lay those thoughts to rest.

The most frightening prospect is, of course, Miller, who is already serving as the shadow president and would, as chief of staff, essentially have the full power of the presidency at his fingertips. Trump is obsessed with his legacy projects and making as much money as possible, and the only other thing he cares about is vengeance on his enemies, a desire he shares in equal fervor with Miller. If Miller has the full power of chief of staff, we can assume that he will be ordering and approving the most authoritarian policies the United States has ever seen, and Trump may not even know it’s been done. That is clearly Miller’s mission, and given the power to enact such policies, he will not hesitate. 

Being far more ruthless and determined, Miller would no doubt run a tighter ship than Pulte or McCarthy. Trump, though, will still be in charge, and it’s easy to imagine that Miller’s actions would make him even more unpopular than he is now. That could make the legacy-concerned president uncomfortable as he confronts the possibility that he will leave office with a personal reputation far worse than Richard Nixon’s and a record of failure lower than Jimmy Carter’s.

It’s not too early to start blaming Miller for Trump’s unpopularity, and Democrats would be wise to start doing that publicly as soon as possible. If he becomes the chief of staff wielding power with fascist fervor, it may just be too late.

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WASHINGTON — After months of being outspent by Democrat James Talarico on the airwaves, Republicans launched a massive rescue mission for Ken Paxton in September, dropping over $200 million to boost their U.S. Senate candidate in Texas.

New campaign finance filings revealed that much of the advertising flurry was funded by one highly motivated donor: Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man.

Musk, who lives near the SpaceX Starbase facility in South Texas, appears to have poured nearly $190 million into the U.S. Senate race in his adopted home state. His role in financing Paxton’s air support was disclosed in reports filed Thursday to the Federal Election Commission by Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s main super PAC and the biggest spender in Texas’ Senate contest.

On Sept. 9, the first day of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Musk gave $75 million to SLF. The next day, SLF put $75 million into a new entity called Texas PAC. By the weekend after the convention, the new super PAC was up on the air with a positive spot about Paxton’s work on sex trafficking and a negative ad attacking Talarico as being for “they/them, not you.”

Two weeks after cutting his first check, Musk gave an additional $83 million to SLF, according to the group’s filing. Sure enough, SLF deposited $83 million into Texas PAC’s coffers the following day.

Musk’s donations armed Senate Republicans to take over the airwaves in Texas. Using Texas PAC as the vessel to book airtime, SLF has thus far spent over $159 million on TV, radio and digital advertising, double the outlay from Talarico’s campaign, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.

SLF backed Sen. John Cornyn in the primary, estimating that a Paxton candidacy would require $150 million to $200 million to retain the seat — money that could come at the expense of other states. While the prediction proved prescient, Musk’s investment has changed the calculus.

“Thanks to some generous investors who have dedicated money to an affiliate, Texas PAC, we’ve been able to go in and support Ken Paxton,” SLF executive director Alex Latcham told Bloomberg TV Wednesday. “We’ll spend nearly $200 million in that race. But again, thanks to Leader John Thune and the Republican caucus and our fundraising, we haven’t had to subtract resources from other states to do so.”

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The Tesla and SpaceX founder got involved in the race after his political team reached out to Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s main outside campaign group, to voice Musk’s concerns about Paxton’s standing in the race, according to a person familiar with the conversations. That led to an agreement between Musk’s orbit and SLF — Musk would provide $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, the main outside group boosting Paxton, if SLF gave $5 million and the PAC raised an additional $5 million. The details of the conversation were first reported by Axios.

That windfall was badly needed. Lone Star Liberty PAC had only $35,000 in the bank at the end of June, having drained its coffers on Paxton’s hard-fought primary win over Cornyn. Talarico, meanwhile, was continuing his torrid fundraising pace and was poised to keep dominating the political ad spending battle if help did not arrive for Paxton.

Talarico posted another record quarter amid Paxton’s SLF-powered ad surge, hauling in $64 million between July and September — a third-quarter record among all U.S. Senate candidates. The Austin Democrat has maintained a polling lead for months in averages of nonpartisan public surveys, an alarming sight for a Republican Party whose unbeaten streak in Texas statewide races spans more than three decades.

With Musk’s donation and the matching funds, Lone Star Liberty PAC spent $17.5 million on broadcast TV advertising in early September, by far the most significant pro-Paxton ad buy of the general election. By the end of the month, a handful of outside groups led by SLF had dropped over $217 million on ads in the Texas Senate race.

X not a part of Paxton’s Big Tech crusade

Paxton has not commented publicly about Musk’s support.

In the past, the attorney general has praised Musk for backing Republicans in 2024. He spent hours at Musk’s home two days before that year’s election hearing Musk recount all his efforts to boost GOP candidates, Paxton said at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in 2024.

“Aren’t you all glad he’s on our side?” Paxton said to cheers. “I am convinced that whatever he did, whatever rocket science thing he did, made a huge difference in this election.”

Paxton has also aligned himself with Musk through his role as Texas attorney general — and largely skirted scrutinizing Musk’s companies as his office has increasingly taken on Big Tech.

In 2022, as Musk sought to buy Twitter, Paxton opened an investigation into the social media company for how it reported the number of accounts on the platform that were fake or bots — inspecting whether the service was inflating the number of its actual users to boost its value for revenue. At the time, Musk was raising similar questions. He ultimately bought Twitter and renamed it X.

In 2024, Paxton opened an investigation into World Federation of Advertisers, an organization that represents marketers, to assess whether its members were conspiring to boycott specific social media services. TechCrunch reported Musk’s X, which had filed an antitrust suit against the group, was likely among the social media platforms.

Meanwhile, Paxton has taken on tech giants including Netflix, WhatsApp, Discord, and Meta — probes he has touted on the campaign trail.

“As attorney general, I’ve sued some of the largest companies in the world … for taking advantage of our kids by exposing them to dangerous, addictive material,” Paxton said after defeating Cornyn in May. “In Washington, I will not stop fighting to protect Texas children from Big Tech.”

But Paxton has taken arrows from critics who’ve accused him of turning a blind eye to X and Musk. In January, a group of Democratic state representatives demanded the attorney general investigate the platform’s artificial intelligence agent, Grok, and its creation of exploitative content about children and women. Paxton did not respond to the letter publicly.

The same month, a group of attorneys general from across the country sent Musk’s company a letter demanding that it address its AI agent’s creation of child sex abuse content. Paxton was not among the signatories.

Funding the GOP ground game

Musk’s political operation is also deeply involved in the Republican ground game in Texas, from canvassing to mailers, across several key races. America PAC, which he seeded with nearly $90 million last quarter, had pumped $18.8 million into the Senate race through Tuesday, per FEC filings, which capture efforts like text messaging, mailers and ads but not in-person canvassing such as block-walking and phone-banking. Over 80% of that money has gone to anti-Talarico messaging.

The tech mogul has significant business interests in the Lone Star State. Musk has moved the state of incorporation for many of his companies to Texas in recent years. Boring Company and X are headquartered in Bastrop, SpaceX is near Brownsville and Tesla’s corporate headquarters is now in Austin.

And it’s not just the Senate race. Musk’s PAC has spent about $800,000 boosting Republican candidates in the five most competitive U.S. House races in Texas. The biggest share has gone to the 35th Congressional District, a San Antonio-area seat Republicans redrew last summer with the intention of flipping, but which has proven highly competitive.

Musk spent hundreds of millions in 2024 to boost Republicans, including Donald Trump’s presidential bid. Trump rewarded Musk by tapping him to lead the controversial Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The two had a public falling out later that year, when Musk disparaged the president’s signature legislative effort and alleged Trump was in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The dustup did not appear to sap Musk’s appetite for bankrolling Republicans’ political spending. The world’s wealthiest man has already surpassed his 2024 political spending this cycle, with Texas the largest focus of his operation.

Other GOP groups are fundraising off of Musk’s Texas spending bonanza as well.

“Elon Musk understands what it’s like to live under far left Democrats,” reads one National Republican Senatorial Committee fundraising email, which notes that Musk has spent $276 million in the midterms and directs readers to a WinRed fundraising page. “He fled an oppressive regime in California that crippled the state with a radical agenda before finding a new home in Texas. But now, the same Far Left Democrats that ran California into the ground are coming to SEIZE Elon’s new home!”

While far from reaching Musk’s investment levels, some prominent Texas GOP donors also came off the sidelines for Paxton in recent months, new filings show.

West Texas oil billionaire Farris Wilks, who has supported Paxton in his state campaigns and directed millions to hardline Republicans, donated $250,000 to one of Paxton’s joint fundraising committees in mid-August, his first federal expenditure of the cycle.

Amarillo billionaire Alex Fairly, meanwhile, had maxed out to Paxton’s direct campaign account with a $7,000 donation in the spring; in late August, he gave $274,300 to Paxton’s joint fundraising committee.

Paxton also received large sums this quarter from the Dallas Cowboys brass. Team president Stephen Jones and chief sales and marketing officer Jerry Jones Jr. gave $122,000 and $100,000, respectively. Their father, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, donated a six-figure sum in the second quarter.

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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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