The Trump White House is The Real Housewives of Pennsylvania Avenue

In the latest episode of “As the Trump Turns,” Elon Musk and Secretary Treasury Scott Bessent, two incredibly powerful billionaires, got into a White House screaming match over who gets to be the acting commissioner of the IRS. According to Axios, Bessent accused Musk of going behind his back to get Trump to appoint Musk’s favored candidate. Musk “clapped back,” calling Bessent a “Soros agent,” and accusing him of running a “failed hedge fund.” “Fuck you!” Bessent screamed. “Say it louder!” shouted Musk.

There were no reports of anyone ripping down drapes or tossing a champagne glass in anyone else’s face. But this is how Donald Trump runs his White House. Charitable boosters say he operates a “Team of Rivals” like Abraham Lincoln’s, but it’s more a WWE gathering than a War Cabinet. Trump’s day-to-day, with its outrageously wealthy secretaries and larger-than-life celebrity guest appearances, is more like The Real Housewives of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue than any kind of real functioning government.

For those of us who like politics as entertainment, this is a vast improvement over the previous administration, with its senile, somnambulist chief executive and interchangeable, dull, never-changing cast of bureaucratic functionaries. The smart money may like Pete Buttigieg, but he’s a policy wonk, not a drama queen. The Biden White House expended a lot of effort to pretend that its one truly compelling soap-opera character, Hunter Biden, didn’t exist. When circumstances forced them to admit that Hunter did exist, they said he didn’t matter, and when it came time to elect Biden’s co-star, America instead chose a show (again) with a more outrageous plot line.

The second Trump administration, whatever your opinion of its policy priorities, is a fabulous, twisty carnival of dysfunction and sexy, dangerous plot twists. On one episode, Trump and J.D. Vance get into a disturbing shouting match with Vladmir Zelensky. In a similar but different episode, Nayib Bukele says he won’t return Kilmar Albrego Garcia to America soil. Vance goes to Europe and tells the EU where to stuff it.

Even the media subplots feature fun and dramatic moments: Trump calls Kaitlin Collins stupid. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt summons MAGA podcaster Tim Pool, who asks a servile question while wearing a dirty beanie. A British newspaper falsely says that Steve Bannon co-host and White House correspondent Natalie Winters dresses like a “Hooters waitress.” Bill Maher and Kid Rock swing by for dinner. Every day is juicy as hell.

But the behind-the-scenes political drama, as always, is the best drama, and it often involves Musk, who the White House showrunner is gradually writing out of the cast. He’s had high-profile fights with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro. These are some of America’s wealthiest people, operating the levers of history like they’re drunks in a high-stakes poker game. And there’s basically no filter. If we don’t know about this stuff in exact real time, then we know about it the next day, just in time to say “oh no he di’int!” about our favorite political soap opera.

For all the paranoid chatter about Trump’s secret plans to jail his political opponents or round up people to send them to various camps foreign or domestic, this is the most transparent administration in history. Strategies change, flips are flopped, but we know about them as soon as they occur and often see them happen live, in real time. Pete Hegseth can’t blow his nose without creating a breaking news story in the Hill. It’s exhausting, it’s exhilarating, it’s ridiculous. Donald Trump may not have a healthy respect for the Constitution, but he certainly understands The Vanderpump Rules.