I was stumped.
On Wednesday, I watched Trump’s Cabinet meeting. I’m not only a glutton for punishment, but I will not be handing out compliments for a very long time.
Stunned, I have been mulling over what to write about that beyond-cringe meeting, trying to figure out what prompts middle-to-older-aged, white adults - educated, although… - suck up to a man like this.
I’ve been around and followed politics long enough to know that sycophancy is as old as licking George Washington’s revolutionary boots. I worked on Capitol Hill in the 1980s and 1990s, and believe me, members of Congress lived in self-constructed bubbles where staffers, lobbyists and hangers-on told them exactly what they wanted to hear.
But there is not a gross enough word that can even begin to describe what happened in the White House Cabinet Room on Wednesday, an over-the-top lesson in leeching that made your skin crawl, your mouth gape, your stomach churn, your ears melt, your eyes cross.
The sensation of watching it was a full-body blow of epic adulating proportions. And if you think I’m exaggerating, try and watch the whole thing as I did. But don’t watch it more than once.
Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler looked Donald Trump dead in the eyes and said, “Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again. You’re leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known… I hear it everywhere I go: ‘Please thank the president for putting us back on track. Thank you.’ They love you.”
They love you. Bleck!.Yuck! That is now part of the historical record. And I don’t know whether my eyes were crossed and I wasn’t seeing straight, but she looked like someone AI-generated not only her, but her words.
Speaking of bleck and yuck, there was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. When he opens his “manly” moronic motor-mouth, it’s akin to watching a blue whale dump 50 gallons of excrement on your head. His words are that abhorrent and that disgusting, and so hard to wash off.
He defecated praise on Trump’s renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, describing the maintenance efforts as "a great segue" and linked it to the Iran war.
What?
But then again, maybe Hegseth knows of what he speaks. Because Trump said that the reflecting pool was a “disgusting place,” and that crews had to pull "more than 10 dumpsters" of accumulated garbage and waste from it.
The reflecting pool sounds an awful lot like Hegseth.
Hours before the meeting, as if they knew the tragedy that was about to transpire, the New York Times ran an analysis article titled, “Trump is the Only Person Who Can Save America, According to His Cabinet.” If you haven’t read this, read it now.
It found that at least one in six sentences spoken by Cabinet members contains praise for Trump, attributes every administration success to him personally, or attacks Democrats. One in six sentences. Watch yesterday’s Cabinet meeting and you will see that come to life.
Six sentences go by fast, so your head will start to spin once your brain starts catching on. It’s almost like each Cabinet member goes five sentences, and then Trump pushes an electrical shock button, and that sixth sentence of praise is jolted out.
When you are watching, you have to keep reminding yourself that these are the people running the most powerful government on earth. And they spend a sixth of their time essentially writing pseudo-Hallmark cards to a man who eats McDonald’s everyday and calls people “piggy,” “dummy” and “scum” on social media.
This is a man who reportedly emits a bad odor. And if you believe the viral videos from yesterday — and other instances — did Trump have an accident in front of the White House after returning from his medical check-up?
Here’s what these people need to understand. You are making absolute fools of yourself and you're wasting your time and your careers tripping over yourselves and fighting each other in order to get a quick lick in on this man’s odorous derriere.
History is littered with the political corpses of people who kissed Donald Trump’s ring and got nothing but humiliation in return. Pam Bondi spent years fawning over this man. Gone. Chris Christie practically built a shrine to Trump after 2016. Trump mocked his weight publicly and called him a loser.
Even John Cornyn, a senator in his 70s who should have known better, genuflected before Trump and still got crushed in his primary by Ken Paxton, a man with one of the most scandal-ridden records in history.
Where do these people go when Trump is done with them? They end up as guests on NewsNation. They write books nobody reads. They show up on panels where the other panelists are also people Trump fired or humiliated.
Do they then try and kiss up to Sean Hannity, thinking that’s their way back into Toady Trumpland?
Earlier this year, The Bulwark writers Sam Stein and Andrew Eggers did what I did and watched an entire Cabinet meeting. They posed a straightforward question this week: “Do we think the Cabinet members have a side contest with each other over who can be the most over the top and obsequious in their praise of Trump at these meetings?”
In April, even conservative commentator Ann Coulter called out the “Kim Jong Il-style tributes” on display.
These North Korea-like meetings consist of a room full of 50 and 60-year-old adults, ostensibly educated, experienced, powerful people, performing like children competing for a gold star from a teacher who is more stupid than they are.
And now I’m going to take a shower and say the rosary to fumigate the pathetic, ego-stroking residue left by those spineless sycophants who ruined a perfectly good afternoon.