Officials in President Trump’s Cabinet meetings spend at least 1 out of every 6 sentences praising him, according to a New York Times analysis published Monday — a level of public flattery that experts say is historically unusual.
The New York Times compared televised Cabinet meetings from Trump’s first term — between July 2017 and May 2020 — to those in his second term over the past year and a half, and found that officials occasionally pushed back on Trump’s decisions and stances during his first term.
Some of the Cabinet officials’ statements echo what Trump has said publicly about himself, including the president’s claims that the Russian war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Gaza “would not have happened” if he had been president. Both Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered similar assurances during these recorded Cabinet meetings, according to The New York Times.
“What happened in Afghanistan; what happened in Ukraine, a war that never would have occurred; what happened on Oct. 7 in Israel never would have happened under President Trump,” Hegseth said in the Jan. 29 Cabinet meeting.
Almost a year earlier, during the March 24, 2025, cabinet meeting, Rubio, referring to the Russian war in Ukraine, said, “This is a war that’s gone on for three years, as you’ve pointed out — that, as you’ve rightly pointed out, would have never happened had you been president.”
