Online gamblers are already placing bets on who will be booted next from Donald Trump’s unraveling cabinet after his labor secretary resigned Monday.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer is now the third cabinet member—and woman—to be exiled from the president’s cabinet within weeks, following former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on March 5 and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 2.
But on Polymarket, a crypto-based online prediction marketplace, bettors are turning their attention to the boys.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were the two leading contenders on Tuesday afternoon, both hovering at around 37 percent odds of being next to go. Lutnick has been under fire after the DOJ’s botched release of the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files revealed the Trump appointee’s relationship with Epstein “did not end until at least 2018”—a decade after the late pedophile was convicted in Florida of soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Before the damning correspondence came to light, Lutnick had told the New York Post that he decided in 2005 “never to be in a room with that disgusting person again.” The Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has helped the president wage his widely criticized war on Iran, launched in coordination with Israel on Feb. 28. In turn, his popularity has sunk, with his approval rating landing at an abysmal 35 percent at the beginning of April, according to CNN. There is little rumbling, however, that the president—who also has an approval rating of 37 percent—is souring on Hegseth, who for years has battled allegations of infidelity, alcohol abuse, and sexual assault. The Defense Department was not immediately available for comment.
The definite safest cabinet member, bettors wagered, was—unsurprisingly—Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is rivaling Vice President JD Vance as the president’s closest confidant.
The charges that put Chavez-DeRemer, Noem, and Bondi on the chopping block were varied. The labor secretary stepped down following an internal Department of Labor investigation into allegations she fostered a toxic workplace—one that reportedly included drinking on the job, taking subordinates to a strip club on a work trip, and carrying on an affair with her bodyguard.
What’s more, the secretary’s husband of more than three decades, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, was banned from entering Labor Department headquarters in February after two female staffers reported him for inappropriate touching. DeRemer has denied the allegations.
“The allegations against me, my family, and my team have been peddled by high-ranked deep state actors who have been coordinating with the one-sided news media and continue to undermine President Trump’s mission,” Chavez-DeRemer wrote in a statement on X.
Bondi left the administration after Trump deemed her insufficient in taking down his political foes, as well as over her botched release of the Epstein files.
And lastly, Noem’s ousting was also tied to matters of the heart—and an ad campaign that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Her departure came weeks before a bombshell report from the Daily Mail revealed her husband, Bryon Noem, 56, had a secret life in which he wore ginormous fake breasts and pink hot pants while speaking to “bimbofication” fetish models online.
