Trump’s clown car Cabinet keeps humiliating him

This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 25 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

Donald Trump has been humiliated a lot lately. And while most of the time that’s because of his own behavior, it’s also because of the people he surrounds himself with.

Just consider how two of Trump’s top law enforcement officials have been spending their time lately. Last weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel were in Las Vegas, hanging out in a pink Lego race car while attending a Formula 1 race.

Now, if this were a one-off incident, you might forgive them for having a little fun after the rigors of their very important day jobs. But for Trump’s Cabinet, living like a C-list celebrity is the job.

I know from experience that when a White House statement contains any version of “The president has confidence in,” or “This Cabinet member is a part of a great team,” it isn’t typically a good sign.

No one seems to do that job better than Patel. Over the past few months, the FBI director has repeatedly used a government jet for recreational travel, including for a golf trip with friends at a private resort in Scotland and attending a wrestling event in Pennsylvania, as well as a getaway to a Texas hunting resort called the “Boondoggle Ranch.”

On top of all that, Patel reportedly has also redirected SWAT team agents from critical duties, presumably such as responding to actual emergencies, to serve as the personal security detail for his 27-year-old girlfriend.

That’s reportedly causing his headline-obsessed boss, Trump, to have second thoughts about choosing him to lead the country’s top law enforcement agency. On Tuesday, MS NOW reported: “Trump is considering removing Kash Patel as FBI director in the coming months, as he and his top aides have grown increasingly frustrated by the unflattering headlines Patel has recently generated, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.”

If that were to happen, Patel would have had the shortest tenure of any confirmed FBI director in history, making it through only about a year of what is supposed to be a 10-year term.

Now, the White House quickly tried to push back on that reporting. A spokesperson told MS NOW that “President Trump has assembled the most talented and impressive Administration in history and they are doing an excellent job carrying out the President’s agenda,” adding that Patel “is a critical member of the President’s team and he is working tirelessly to restore integrity to the FBI.”

I know from experience that when a White House statement contains any version of “The president has confidence in,” or “This Cabinet member is a part of a great team,” it isn’t typically a good sign.

But the White House really left us an opening there with that statement, and it got us wondering: What are the other members of the “most talented and impressive Administration in history” up to these days?

Well, let’s start with the other member of Patel’s pit crew, Noem. When she isn’t spending her days playing cowgirl dress-up or riding around in Lego cars, the former South Dakota governor has been facing considerable scrutiny over a report from ProPublica that her agency funneled hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to a firm with ties to Noem herself. A group of lawmakers has now called for an investigation into how that firm ended up getting all that taxpayer money.

Then there’s the former reality TV star Trump put in charge of our nation’s travel infrastructure, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Right now, Duffy has a lot on his plate: Americans are preparing for the busiest travel season of the year, and the recent government shutdown has led to a wave of flight cancellations that continue even after the government reopened.

But Americans shouldn’t worry — Duffy has an idea that is going to fix this country’s air travel once and for all. This week, the transportation secretary encouraged Thanksgiving travelers to “dress a little better,” which he argued could help people “behave a little better.”

Remember, this is the same man who just scrapped a Biden-era proposal to compensate travelers for flight disruptions.

But I’ve got to say, compared with some of Trump’s other Cabinet secretaries, Duffy almost seems like a problem-solver.

Just consider Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent. Right now, he also has a lot on his plate: Trump’s tariff policy is a disaster, all those deals the president promised haven’t come to fruition, prices are up, housing costs are up and health care costs are about to go way up for a lot of people.

But don’t worry, because Bessent also has a plan. This week, he told Americans that the “best way” to bring down inflation was to “move from a blue state to a red state.”

Then there’s Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The man in charge of our nation’s health has been hard at work recently, making the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention update its website with new warnings. The agency’s “vaccine safety” webpage now says that “the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the man in charge of the world’s largest military, is currently spending his working days ordering an investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly over the Arizona Democrat’s participation in a social media video reminding members of the armed forces that they do not have to follow illegal orders.

Kelly responded to the news of this investigation by posting on X a photo of the numerous medals he was awarded for his service in the Navy. Which, in turn, prompted the defense secretary to launch a new attack over, of all things, whether Kelly displayed his medals in the right order.

Even some Republicans are admitting this whole thing is ridiculous. On Tuesday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska posted on X: “The Department of Defense and FBI surely have more important priorities than this frivolous investigation.”

Now, it’s clear none of the people Trump chose to be part of his administration are exactly killing it these days. But there is perhaps nowhere in Trump’s administration suffering more embarrassment than the Justice Department.

In just the past week, we learned that Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s handpicked prosecutor leading the investigations into two of his rivals, made critical mistakes that jeopardized their entire case against former FBI Director James Comey.

Then, on Monday, a judge ruled that the administration never properly appointed Halligan in the first place, meaning the cases she brought against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have now been dismissed.

At the same time, we learned that the Justice Department is investigating two Trump officials for potentially violating the law during their investigation into another of Trump’s political rivals, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

There is perhaps nothing more important to Trump in his second term than his revenge tour against his rivals. But somehow, those prosecutions have become the biggest example of incompetence from an administration staffed by some of the most inept lackeys this country has ever seen.

Allison Detzel contributed.