“Is anybody unhappy?” President Donald Trump asked his first cabinet meeting, which included the handful of yet-to-be Senate approved nominees and DOGE Capo Elon Musk.
“ALL CABINET MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON,” Trump posted on Truth Social the night before. “The Media will see that at the Cabinet Meeting this morning!!!”
Of course, nobody dared even hint at any unhappiness. Everybody eagerly applauded.
“I think everyone’s not only happy, they’re thrilled,” Trump responded.
The fawning was hardly unexpected. “It’s deja vu all over again,” the late Yogi Berra supposedly said. More on that in a minute.
But here’s where the conclave got curiouser: On TV, it looked like Musk was running the show.
Trump and his apparatchiks sat around the big shiny table. Musk — who is not officially in the cabinet — stood, lecturing everybody. He wore his familiar black duds and matching MAGA ball cap – attire which, given his politics, invites comparison to SS wear.
Anyway, when Trump called on him to speak, the world’s richest person gave everybody his version of what’s what. Taking their cue from 45/47, they seemed rapt, hanging on his every word.
Trump acted deferential, like he does around Russian czar-wannabe Vladimir Putin.
For years, the $64,000 Question (I’m showing my age of 75) has been “What’s Putin got on Trump?” Musk has lavished millions on Trump and has millions more to spare. But you’ve also got to wonder what else Musk might have on the president.
Anyway, when Trump was in the White House the first time, I suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, should author a sequel about Trump and his cabinet.
I proposed she call it Team of Toadies: A Study in Sycophancy. Based on the inaugural conclave, Trump’s new cabinet is shaping up to be just as feckless as the first one.
Wrote Goodwin: “That Lincoln, after winning the presidency, made the unprecedented decision to incorporate his eminent rivals into his political family was evidence of a profound self-confidence and a first indication of what would prove to others a most unexpected greatness. ... Every member of this administration was better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life than Lincoln. ... It soon became clear, however, that Abraham Lincoln would emerge the undisputed captain of this most unusual cabinet, truly a team of rivals.”
The rivals included his three main competitors for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination: New York Sen. William H. Seward, Ohio Gov. Salmon P. Chase, and Missourian Edward Bates, who had been a congressman, judge, and the Show Me State’s attorney general.
Seward was Lincoln’s Secretary of State; Chase, treasury secretary; and Bates, attorney general. Lincoln replaced his first secretary of war, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Simon Cameron, with Democrat Edwin M. Stanton, an Ohio Democrat who had supported Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Lexington, the Southern Democrat, over the Kentucky-born Lincoln.
Lincoln understood that he had to have the ablest of crews to help him steer the ship of state through the most turbulent waters in American history: Southern secession and armed rebellion against Uncle Sam.
Lincoln raised eyebrows – and some Republican hackles – when he hired Stanton in 1862. Stanton didn’t just vote against Lincoln, he trashed him as “the original gorilla.”
The especially irascible Stanton was not one to pull punches, which was a big reason why Lincoln put him in the cabinet. The president affectionately called him “Mars,” for the Roman god of war.
Lincoln and his team often butted heads. It’s always the opposite with Trump. Cross him, and you’re out.
Lincoln also fired cabinet members and generals, but not because they didn’t sufficiently stroke his ego. He sacked them because they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do their jobs.
Trump talks tough. But history instructs that leaders who demand constant flattery and fawning are weak and insecure.
“Donald Trump again has assembled a team of sycophants,” said Murray State University historian Brian Clardy. “Like the first time he was president, he only wants people he thinks will bow down to him and kiss his ring.
“Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, sought people who were competent and would give him good, sound advice, even those who opposed him politically, because he needed the best people at a time when the country was facing its greatest crisis.”
Lincoln wanted anything but obsequiousness. Trump demands it.
Who can forget his made-for-the-media cabinet meeting on June 12, 2017, when the president went around the table giving everybody an opportunity to brag on him. They swooned that it was an “honor,” “privilege” and “blessing” to serve under the narcissist-in-chief, Vox’s Sean Illing wrote.
Illing also recalled that Vice similarly reported [in 2017] that “Trump receives a folder each day (twice a day, actually) littered with glowing tweets, fawning articles, clips of positive cable news segments, and occasionally pictures of himself on TV looking ... presidential. If you want to last in this White House, you’ve got to lavish the president with adulation.”
About this time last year, 154 scholars rated Lincoln our greatest president and Trump our worst. (Joe Biden finished 14th.)
So here we go again. The emperor will command, and his new team of toadies will perform. Like the old team, they’ll pronounce the emperor’s duds oh so dazzling. Musk’s, too, it seems.
A footnote: Time will tell if Trump and Musk will ultimately have one of those classic cowboy movie showdowns where two gunslingers decide “This town ain’t big enough for both of us.” But who will run whom out of town? Trump’s got the political throw weight. But Musk’s got the money, and who knows what else, that might make Trump the second sitting president to resign in office.
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