Trump’s Cabinet Has Entered Full Suck-Up Mode

President Trump’s Cabinet meetings have always had a distinct “grown adults competing to flatter Trump quality,”  but a new analysis shows that this ritual has grown even more deranged than we suspected. 

According to a New York Times review of more than a dozen hours of Trump Cabinet meeting footage, about one in every six sentences spoken in these meetings either praised Trump, credited Trump with some sweeping achievement, or attacked his political enemies. In other words, the people charged with running the federal government appear to spend a startling amount of time during official meetings simply sucking up. 

The apparent champion of this game, per the Times analysis, is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Yes, “Little Marco” himself—the man Trump spent years humiliating! Rubio reportedly stood out for how often he praised Trump, literally presenting him as the only person on Earth capable of solving global crises from Ukraine to Israel to Sudan.  

All the nauseating flattery can be broken up into three distinct categories. There’s the “only Trump” section: “This can only happen under your leadership,” and “he’s the only leader that can bring this to an end.” Then we have the “Americans are grateful for Trump” category, with statements like “the American worker is so grateful,” and “they all ask me to thank you.” And of course, never-ending attacks on Democrats and President Joe Biden—the report gives that last crown to Vice President JD Vance. 

This would be embarrassing enough if it were happening at a corporate retreat or a sleepover, but these are Cabinet meetings. These are the people overseeing foreign policy, defense, health, education, labor, the economy, and the rest of the American welfare. And yet the order of operations seems to be “everyone go around the table and say one nice thing about the president.”

This isn’t altogether shocking, just disappointing—Trump has always demanded this kind of thing. Loyalty is currency in his world, and he doesn’t want it to be subtle. It has to be televised (as so many of these Cabinet meetings are), repeated, exaggerated, and ideally delivered with the intensity of someone who gets that their job depends on it. 

These marathon meetings can last up to three hours and according to The New York Times, have become a hallmark of Trump’s second term. Compared to Trump’s first term where Cabinet meetings pushed back against the president’s rash decisions and impulses, this new era is all about proving your allegiance. Anyone else getting Voldemort at the table with his Death Eaters vibes? 

So yeah this NYT analysis was very eye opening—apparently this is what governance looks like when the Cabinet becomes a fan club.