And we all thought Donald Trump was the king of reality firing! Simon Cowell went down to the basement of his evil lair to get out his chopping axe and dude has been swingin’!

Simon “Pink Slip McGee” Cowell has handed walking papers to Nicole Scherzinger, Steve Jones and now Paula Abdul. Yep. Paula, who was personally recruited by Simon after she was previously asked to leave American Idol, got canned too.

To add insult to X Factor injury, Paula found out that she was on the outs via a lawyer connected with the show and has not, as of this post, spoken with Simon personally.

No one knows who’s on Simon’s short list to replace all of these new vacancies. I’m not sure how excited even d-listers will be to work for the man now. Yikes!

Photo: WENN