Pete Hegseth finally has some competition
Listen – with all the crazy shit happening right now – I wanted to be sure that this story didn’t slip through the cracks – cause it’s a good one.
Apparently, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer keeps champagne, bourbon, and Kahlua in her office and she reportedly drinks during work hours – cosplaying Don Draper like she’s in an episode of Mad Men.
Also – she’s been inviting a subordinate to her D.C. apartment for what I’ll generously call “meetings” – dismissing her security detail first, because nothing says “routine professional interaction” like ordering your bodyguards to leave.
The complaint filed with her own department’s Inspector General reads like a pitch for a Shonda Rhimes show nobody asked for. Three apartment visits. Two hotel room encounters during official travel. A trip to the Red Rocks Casino Resort and Spa in Las Vegas for her niece’s birthday – during a government shutdown, naturally. Video footage allegedly exists. When rumors started circulating among staff, Chavez-DeRemer reportedly told her chief of staff to “leave it alone.” Classic.
The alcohol stash deserves its own paragraph – Champagne – Bourbon – and some spicy ladies favorite, Kahlua. In the office of the person responsible for enforcing workplace standards. During a period when her employees were watching colleagues get axed by Elon Musk’s chainsaw governance philosophy. She also threw herself a birthday party at headquarters in April, complete with wine and her face on multiple TVs, while DOGE was canceling $500 million in grants to fight child labor.
Here’s what makes this genuinely super funny: Chavez-DeRemer wasn’t even the Trump cabinet member everyone expected to have the day-drinking scandal. That was supposed to be Pete Hegseth, whose Fox News colleagues reported smelling alcohol on him more than a dozen times before he went on air. The same Hegseth who allegedly had to be restrained from climbing onstage at a strip club. The guy who promised senators he’d stop drinking if confirmed, which is definitely something people without drinking problems say.
Hegseth set the bar. Chavez-DeRemer allegedly brought one to the office.
Sources describe her as a “boss from hell” who forces aides to run personal errands on the clock. The complaint alleges travel fraud – staff allegedly “make up” official trips so she can visit family and friends on the taxpayer’s dime.
Last year, the department spent hundreds of thousands sending her to 37 states. At least ten trips went to Nevada or places where she has personal connections. Her Arizona vacation property, conveniently located near a country club, figured into a September ProPublica report about her two simultaneous primary-residence mortgages – the same thing Trump calls “deceitful and potentially criminal” when Democrats do it.
Her husband issued the standard spouse denial. The White House attacked the New York Post – Trump’s own favorite newspaper – for running the story. The Inspector General declined to confirm or deny anything.
None of this matters, obviously. Chavez-DeRemer already weathered the birthday party, the dual mortgages, and her complete abandonment of the pro-union positions that got 17 Democrats to vote for her.
So yes: the nation’s top workplace official allegedly keeps a minibar in her government office, might be sleeping with a subordinate, and has staff invent travel excuses so she can hit casinos. But she’s an “incredible asset to President Trump’s team.”
We’ve really set an incredibly low bar. (Not my best… but it’s Sunday)
SOURCES
https://www.thedailybeast.com/labor-sec-under-investigation-for-relationship-with-staffer/
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/who-lori-chavez-deremer-inappropriate-relationship-office-drinking-secret-hotel-trysts-1769870
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-cabinet-members-office-birthday-bash-raises-eyebrows/
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-cabinet-mortgage-fraud
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pete-hegseths-drinking-worried-colleagues-fox-news-sources-tell-nbc-ne-rcna181471