A CABINET OF SYCOPHANTS

Around the White House table, the president's team are rivals only for his affection

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attend a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30. / Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.

Last July, I wrote about one of Joe Biden’s last televised Cabinet meetings—a dreary affair at which the president opened by reading from a three- or four-page introduction in large type that had been prepared by aides who covered each page with plastic, perhaps to make it easier, so I thought but did not write, to turn the pages.

At last Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting in the White House, television cameras were present and the proceedings were broadcast live and in real time by C-SPAN. I was more than a little curious about the event. I’ve had no direct or indirect contact with Trump, but I knew a great deal about Vice President Dick Cheney when he worked for President George W. Bush. Cheney did not suffer fools. Period. While watching C-SPAN, I recalled being told that, after a testy meeting in his office with a smug four-star admiral, the vice president told his staff with a laugh that he wished there were a trap door under the admiral’s feet and a button within easy reach.

Here was a chance, perhaps, to see the president at work. Surely there would be moments of give-and-take with aides and advisors. There were a few questions about relevant issues – he asked Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, about the high suicide rate among veterans. But such substance was a rarity. There was not much to be learned other than the fact the president was perfectly content to let his Cabinet leaders speak without much interruption as long as the subject was his own superb leadership. Inevitably, the event was marked by fulsome flattery and absurd misstatements of fact. But whether or not he’s done so legally or constitutionally, Trump has done a few of the things he said he would do: slash the federal government to a level beyond comprehension; shut down the United States’ southern border; and stem the flow of migrants into the country. It was in part his repeated promise to do so that won him the presidency last fall along with majorities in the House and Senate.