...
By David Faris
Associate Professor, Roosevelt University
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
One of the more unnerving and under-the-radar features of America’s rapid descent into authoritarian kleptocracy is President Donald Trump’s televised cabinet meetings, where one official after another goes around the table obsequiously kowtowing him and telling him what an amazing job he’s doing, stroking his papier machete ego and trying to prevent our senescent and emotionally incontinent strongman from having a meltdown (or drifting off into a nap). Everyone involved in these snowflake-fluffing spectacles should be deeply embarrassed—if only the concept of shame still existed in GOP politics.
These meetings by now have a familiar and unsettling cadence. They begin with President Trump delivering one of his lie-festooned campaign speeches. “In 10 months, we've secured commitments of over $18 trillion,” he said to his executive hostages on December 2, a figure he concocted out of thin air that is almost as big as the size of the entire American economy. “One year ago, our country was dead,” he said. “Now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
...
Read More on Opinion
Then cabinet members are given the opportunity to competitively slobber over the president with melodramatic praise. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed that “the spirit in our ranks since the election under President Trump is unprecedented.” Higher spirits than after the U.S. won World War II? Incredible stuff! Wash, rinse, repeat for nearly two-and-a-half interminable hours at a clip.
All presidents have different leadership styles. Abraham Lincoln famously deployed his cabinet to vet competing ideas and to make excruciatingly difficult choices, as chronicled in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. Barack Obama similarly thought of his top executive branch officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as experts who could help him approach problems from every angle, perhaps sometimes too ponderously.
The influence of Senate-confirmed cabinet members has been on the wane for decades, especially as the executive branch has grown increasingly unwieldy. “I cannot even see all of these men, let alone actually study what they are doing,” President Harry Truman once said. Most presidents have come to rely on White House staff, friends and confidantes whose portfolios are mostly beyond the reach of congressional oversight, like Trump’s immigration consigliere Stephen Miller.
Many of the most influential people in President Trump’s royal court, however, are the Fox News chatterboxes he watches religiously on TV, which is why he made a number of them members of his cabinet. These empty-headed grifters are the anchors of his carefully curated misinformation universe, many of whom know they are speaking directly to an audience of one, like the hive mind addressing Carol on Apple TV+’s Pluribus.
The minute they became cabinet secretaries instead of television stars, they became much less important to President Trump, largely because media coverage is the primary way that he understands and reacts to the political world. He is also so indifferent to the goings-on inside what remains of the various executive agencies that he often appears to have no idea what his own policies are or what’s happening in the country.
To the extent that he is involved in policymaking, it is to send these hapless quislings off on the next goose chase, jerking tariffs around or preparing to bomb Nigeria or buy Greenland or implement the next plainly illegal executive order or inflict some fresh and indefensible cruelty on immigrants. It is up to them to figure out which of his often irreconcilable policy pronouncements on social media are to be taken seriously but not literally.
The worst possible offense is not to constantly commit crimes or to make terrible public policy decisions but rather to draw bad press, which is why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and FBI Director Kash Patel are reportedly in hot water. The real job is this: The president lies and the cabinet secretaries are to give the lies a shape and a narrative and plausibility so that everyone in this vast propaganda operation can memorize their lines.
The truth is that Trump has already achieved his most meaningful goals in politics. His reelection has enriched him and his family members and cronies and knocked down virtually all of the guardrails, rules and obstacles to naked graft and self-dealing that occasionally restrained him when he was simply a corrupt businessman. His campaign of terror against innocent people has made America what he has always wanted it to be—a last-choice destination for immigrants—a place you would only migrate to if you literally had no other choice.
That’s why these cabinet meetings are nothing but cringe kiss-up sessions whose sole purpose is to keep the declining autocrat in a haze of good feelings and esteem-boosting praise. And they will be one of the first things that future historians will consult to make sense of this humiliating and catastrophic period of our national story.
David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and a contributing writer at Slate*,* The Nation*,* The Week and Newsweek*. He is the author of* It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. You can follow him on Bluesky.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines