'Watch out for January': Insider reveals which Trump Cabinet member will be first to go

U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order about Leif Erikson Day, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sit next to him, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 9, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Washington D.C. correspondent David Gardner on Wednesday revealed which member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet will be first to go, telling podcast host Joanna Coles to “watch out for January and Pete Hegeseth."
Noting Trump’s penchant for rapid turnover during his first term, Gardner explained he was “told early on that Trump did not want a repeat of his first administration, where it was kind of chaos.”
“He was firing people, hiring people, it was a lot of unrest within the administration,” Gardner noted of Trump's first administration.
According to Gardner, he was “ told [Trump] was going to give most of his leading Cabinet members a year, so there wasn’t this kind of constant departure thing.”
“So my guess is, watch out for January and Pete Hegseth, because I don’t think he’s going to last much longer than that first year,” Gardner said.
Trump’s so-called “Secretary of War" is “taking very much a back step” to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Gardner said.
“So he’s bottom of the list in terms of efficiency and top of the list in terms of suck ups,” the correspondent added.
Per the Daily Beast:
“I don’t think he’s trusting him,” [Gardener] said of Trump and Hegseth. “I seem to remember the last meeting in the Middle East, he was put on a separate plane from the others, Hegseth. Again, sending a message perhaps.”
“So it’s really a fight for the president’s attention and support more than it is a fight for the job and the department,” Ewall-Wice said.