Yesterday, President Trump’s full Cabinet met for the fourth time since he took office. Once again, they did it in front of reporters and cameras, and they answered hundreds of reporters’ questions. The media’s packed attendance resulted in almost no articles. The New York Times didn’t report any of the meeting’s actual
contents, but rather waxed philosophical with a David French highbrow op-ed headlined, “
Trump’s Cabinet Members: A Rorschach Test for America.” Forget about the Times. Watch it for yourself:
FULL: President Trump’s full, televised cabinet meeting (2:02:46).
David French squinted at his Rorschach card and somehow saw a meeting of North Korean Generals. I’d bet Gavin Newsom’s entire stock of hair gel that David has never seen a North Korean Generals’ meeting. He seemed to love that metaphor and spent too much time on it. The point was, the Cabinet members were too positive about Trump’s policies, which annoyed David, who presumably thought they should be ripping Trump a new one.
Media acts like we all just landed on Planet Earth or have amnesia or something. Joe Biden held only nine Cabinet meetings in four years. Yesterday was Trump’s fourth Cabinet meeting in 100 days, which now exceeds Biden’s annual total during any one of his four agonizing years (President Autopen could only handle three a year). Biden’s meetings were carefully scripted, with Biden answering fewer than a dozen questions over his nine meetings.
Yesterday, President Trump himself took over one hundred questions from reporters.
Later, Press Secretary Leavitt asked pool reporters, “Can you ever remember a Cabinet meeting in which the media were welcomed into the room to ask questions of the entire federal government?” She waited a brief moment for any response from reporters. There was none. “No you can’t,” she answered for them, “because it has never happened.”
Each Cabinet member delivered a quick status report, pointing out achievements, their current focuses, and opportunities. It was all wonderfully encouraging; I could write a segment on each report. Everyone said
something memorable and newsworthy. For just one example, RFK told the group that, based on what they’d uncovered, HHS had been “complicit” in child trafficking for “sex and slavery.”
You would think something like that would be a headline-grabber. But only one or two local outlets covered it. Headline from
yesterday’s Jersey Shore:
Secretary Kennedy didn’t just say HHS was
involved in child trafficking. He called HHS the
principal vector: “We have ended HHS as the role, as the vector, the principal vector in this country for child trafficking," Kennedy said. "And we're very aggressively going out and trying to find these children—300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration."
A related statement from DHS yesterday announced that, so far,
five thousand missing kids have been found and safely returned to family members or a reliable guardian.
It was aggravating but unsurprising that no major media platform reported any of Kennedy’s news.
Anyway, that was just a single point from one Cabinet member. Overall, one was left with the strong impression of not just a collection of individual politically connected appointees, but a coherent
team. Not only that, but a team of unique, highly skilled folks who enjoy working together, and who seem to understand both the gravity of the moment but also the need for a sense of humor and a spirit of having fun. The members often cracked jokes and poked fun at each other.
For instance, at one point SecState Rubio quipped, “thanks to Robert, I’m afraid to eat
anything.” When Elon Musk was getting ribbed for wearing
two Trump caps at the same time, he joked, “I’m used to wearing a lot of hats; even my hats wear hats.”
If you have time, you should watch the whole thing. I will try to cover a few of the more important parts over the next couple days.
Trump holds 4th full Cabinet meeting; Kennedy drops HHS child-trafficking bomb; “radical” new vaccine policy stuns experts; media ignores giant magnetic hole in Earth’s shield.
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