At televised cabinet meeting turned Trumpian lovefest, department heads cry the praises of dear leader
No honest American can watch grown men and women publicly humiliate themselves in front of Trump without realizing that something has gone terribly wrong with this presidency
This piece was previously published at The Hot Screen.
There is not much that is fun or amusing witnessing your country’s slide into authoritarianism. While once upon a time we would have had to look abroad for examples of this not-fun-ness, nowadays we can, tragically, stay close to home for corroborating evidence. From masked ICE agents administering beat-downs to unresisting landscapers, to a president openly trying to subvert the midterm elections, to a certain brain-wormed HHS secretary canceling our right to stay alive via vaccinations, to government agents fanning out across our capital city and demanding that beleaguered residents provide proof of identity, our reality has grown ominously dystopian. The casual disregard of the basics of a free society, the complicity of civic institutions and businesses, the perpetually dazed and inadequate response from the Democrats — it’s enough to induce an escalating sense of dread in even the hardiest among us.
But there’s one possible exception to the not-fun-ness, and that is Trump’s love for televised Cabinet meetings in which department heads and other leading lights of his regime vie to deliver the most obsequious praise of the president that they or their own equally obsequious advisors can devise.
This week, Trump gave Americans the longest, most absurd one yet, the three-hour-plus televised session providing fresh and nauseating nuggets of kiss-assery. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick proclaimed that, “This is the greatest Cabinet working for the greatest president. And I just want to say thank you.” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins praised him for saving college football. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer invited him “to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.” And Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East and Russia, shared that, “There’s only one thing I wish for: that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel award was ever talked about.”
There’s pleasure to be had in bad people humiliating themselves badly, and video and written accounts of this Cabinet meeting provide such pleasure. Their praise is overwrought, cliched, obvious. There is an element of child-like simplicity to it, amplified by the sometimes forced-sounding cheer of their remarks. It’s a spectacle of submission with a hint of community theater, where adults seem to be playing children playing adults, and this is funny in a silly sort of way.
But I like to think that at a basic level, most Americans recognize these Cabinet sessions as alien to our political traditions, while also being somewhat familiar with them from films about authoritarian regimes and TV satires of office politics. “Why,” an ordinary person might think, “are they doing this to themselves? And what sort of president would ask them to do it?”
And if these questions stick with you for a bit, even if they are not entirely conscious, it is not long before the silly begins to feel sinister. After all, this president openly enjoying such absurd devotion is the same Trump who is trying to crush our democracy and our free society, drive our economy into the ground, and destroy health care basics like vaccines and, well, health care. He is the same president who has openly lusted to shoot down protestors, who aims to deport millions of hard-working immigrants while demonizing them as “invaders,” who seems bent on canceling our basic right to throw the bums out by working to subvert the 2026 midterm elections. The whole scene starts to look a lot less cute, and a lot more like a tasteless reality TV production meant to simulate benign consensus for a horrific action plan. This monster wants us to love him as he destroys us.
Likewise, it assumes a darker aspect when you stop to think that these pols who seem so weak and contemptible are the same people so eagerly carrying out Trump’s wicked schemes, whether it’s Witkoff advancing plans to let Russia keep its gains from its war of aggression against Ukraine, Lutnick playing apologist for deranged tariffs that are likely to tip the U.S. into recession, or Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem helping Trump spread anti-immigrant hatred and ICE-inflicted cruelty from coast to coast. The spinelessness amplifies the sense of their complicity; they are willing instruments of a sick man.
Obviously — obviously!! — Trump has a different perspective from me on how this all looks. He seems to think that these displays of obsequy will strengthen his hold over his Cabinet secretaries and other high officials; that dominating them so publicly, and inviting them to participate in his domination of them, will secure their loyalty to him through some psycho-sexual-ritualistic group dynamic that he probably can’t articulate but damned well knows how to achieve. Sadly, he may well be right about this; if nothing else, the man has a knack for attracting and binding to him those willing to trade their conscience for a whiff of power.
I also think that Trump believes these Cabinet meetings make him look beloved and popular to those watching at home; that he thinks Americans will see a man who is obviously accomplishing great things, based on the testimonials of those closest in power to him; and that by so openly dominating others, he is sending a clear message that he is a strong man who can protect ordinary Americans. But in this, I’d like to think that Trump is wrong; that for most Americans, this intention is backfiring. As I said, it is difficult to watch these scenes and not see obviously unbelievable propaganda in support of the president — a problem that only compounds as you begin to weigh imperfect reality against the dream world that Trump and his lackeys describe, of presidential perfection and national splendor.
Most people intuitively recognize that someone who tries so ostentatiously to seem so strong and perfect likely has something to hide. Trump also seems not to understand the danger of a leader making his lieutenants look not just weak but pathetic. It is one thing to dominate people in an intimidating way; it is a riskier strategy to dominate them in a way that makes them easy to make fun of and hard to take seriously, all while raising the question of whether we should respect the man who chose such clowns in the first place.
Maybe I’m overly optimistic that the grotesquerie on display is so easily perceptible to most people, but I don’t think so. Happily, there has been decent news coverage of this latest meeting that speaks honestly of what we can all see ourselves, and so provides a reality check for those who might doubt their reactions. The Washington Post had a particularly good article that placed the Cabinet meeting dynamics within the context of the practices of other authoritarian leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Unfortunately, other news sources, like The New York Times, offered “savvy” analysis that highlighted the reality TV aspects while whitewashing the sinister reality just below the surface; seeing this type of coverage is disheartening, and a good reminder that there are few better ways for Americans to gauge the basic malignity of Trump than to simply watch, unfiltered, the dismal, basic human interactions between the maximum leader and his minions.
So enjoy the fleeting joy of their humiliation — but bear in mind it’s done in service of a TV production meant to advance a politics that ultimately aims for the humiliation and dominance of the viewer at home as well.