by Jon Sopel
No cabinet in any administration stays the same for long, but in Donald Trump’s the turnover of people from the top table has been quite something. The revolving door has needed grease applied regularly. In the room each cabinet chair bears a brass plate with name, position and dates of service. When a cabinet member departs, the tradition is that their cabinet chair is bought by the staff and presented to them as a gift. In which case, since Donald Trump’s election, cabinet chair makers and the brass plaque manufacturers of Washington DC must be enjoying something of a boom.
Just how far the Trump administration would be from the Lincoln model became clear when the President brought his cabinet together for the first time. The cameras were brought in to witness the opening round table discussion. It was a first to be able to record at such length the inner workings of the cabinet of the 45th president.
This was the room which had been the nerve centre for fraught discussion led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt over whether the then isolationist US should join the war against Nazi Germany after Pearl Harbor, and later the brinkmanship during the Cuban missile crisis as John F. Kennedy was engaged in the most dangerous poker game with his Soviet counterpart Nikita Kruschev. Forty years later George W. Bush brought his key national security advisors together there on 12 September 2001, to declare that freedom and democracy were under attack. Look back over the momentous periods of US history, and all the president’s men would have been sat around the table, with the key advisors sitting on the room’s outer edges, while looking down from the walls were the portraits of predecessors who had wrestled in their own era with the nation’s destiny, and who would be a source of silent reassurance (or discomfort) for those who succeeded them.
In June 2017, five months after his inauguration, Donald Trump was eventually able to bring his completed cabinet together for the first time, after his nominees had finally navigated their way through the rocks and rapids of tricky confirmation hearings. What unfolded was less ‘team of rivals’ than the ‘squad of sycophants’. The meeting seemed to be an exercise in smarm. What follows is an only slightly edited version of what was said. It starts with the President giving a tour d’horizon, praising his cabinet – but most of all lavishing praise on himself. It is then the turn of his newly appointed cabinet secretaries. It is probably best to skip this next bit if you have a delicate stomach or are prone to queasiness. I have quoted it at length – though not exhaustively – because it is telling as an insight into the demeanour of his senior staff, and revealing too in how unabashed the President is to be bathed in praise and adoration.
DONALD TRUMP: This is our first Cabinet meeting with the entire Cabinet present. The confirmation process has been record-setting long – and I mean record-setting long – with some of the finest people in our country being delayed and delayed and delayed.
It is an incredible, talented group of people in this room: generals, governors, congressmen, entrepreneurs, business leaders and many, many others. I chose each person at this table and I chose them not only because of their remarkable experience and success, but because they’ve all been united by one shared goal, what they want to do, one very simple, but very beautiful, goal: serving and defending our beloved nation.
I will say that never has there been a president – with few exceptions; in the case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle – who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated. Many bills; I guess over 34 bills that Congress signed.
So, we’re here to change Washington, return power to the people. We’re here to give people a great shot at a great, great job, and even opening small businesses and employing other people. I look forward to hearing all of the reports from the different people in the room today.
We have done, as I said, about as much as anybody ever in a short period of time in a presidency. That’s despite a tremendous opposition from the other side. We have done something that’s very special. And you see it in the economy numbers, because the economic numbers have been incredible.
So, I think what we’ll do – most of you know most of the people around the room, but I’m going to start with our – our Vice-President. Where is our Vice-President? [Inaudible] [Laughter] There he is.
And I’ll maybe start with Mike.
MIKE PENCE (Vice-President): Thank you, Mr President. And just the greatest privilege of my life is to serve as the – as vice-president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people and assembling a team that’s bringing real change, real prosperity, real strength back to our nation.
TRUMP: Thank you, Mike.
JEFF SESSIONS (Attorney General): Mr President, it’s great to be here and celebrate this group. We are receiving, as you know – I’m not sure the rest of you fully understand – the support of law enforcement all over America.
They have been very frustrated. They are so thrilled that we have a new idea that we’re going to support them and work together to properly, lawfully fight the rising crime that we are seeing. And it’s an honour to be able to serve you in that regard [interrupted by Trump saying ‘That – that’s great’].
TRUMP: Thank you.
ALEX ACOSTA (Labour department): Mr President, I am privileged to be here. Deeply honoured, and I want to thank you for being – your commitment to the American workers.
TRUMP: Thank you and congratulations.
RICK PERRY (Energy): My hat’s off to you for taking that stance [withdrawing from Paris climate change deal] and presenting a clear message around the world that America’s going to continue to lead in the area of energy.
TRUMP: Thank you, Rick.
NIKKI HALEY (UN Ambassador): Thank you, Mr President. It’s a new day at the United Nations. You know, we now have a very strong voice … And so, I think the international community knows we’re back.
TRUMP: Thank you, Nikki. That’s terrific.
MICK MULVANEY (Director of Office of Management and Budget): With your direction, we’re able to focus on the forgotten man and woman, who are the folks who are paying those taxes. So I appreciate your support and direction in pulling that budget together.
TRUMP: Thank you, Mick.
BETSY DEVOS (Education): Mr President, it’s a privilege to serve, to serve the students of this country, and to work to ensure that every child has an equal opportunity to get a great education, and therefore a great future.
TRUMP: Thank you, Betsy.
TOM PRICE (Health and Human Services): Mr President, what an incredible honour it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership. I can’t thank you enough for the privileges you’ve given me and the leadership that you’ve shown.
TRUMP: Thank you.
RYAN ZINKE (Interior): Mr President, it’s an honour to be your steward of our public lands and the generator of energy dominance. I am deeply honoured. And I am committed and optimistic that we can be both great stewards and be the world’s largest producer of energy.
TRUMP: And we can do both. Thank you very much.
REX TILLERSON (Secretary of State): Mr President, thank you for the honour to serve the country. It’s a great privilege you’ve given me.
JIM MATTIS (Defense): Mr President, it’s an honour to represent the men and women of the Department of Defense. And we are grateful for the sacrifices our people are making in order to strengthen our military so our diplomats always negotiate from a position of strength. Thank you.
TRUMP: Thank you.
WILBUR ROSS (Commerce): Mr President, thank you for the opportunity to help fix the trade deficit and other things. The other countries are gradually getting used to the idea that the free rides are somewhat over with.
TRUMP: Thank you, Wilbur.
ELAINE CHAO (Transport): Mr President, thank you so much for coming over to the Department of Transportation. Hundreds and hundreds of people were just so thrilled,
hanging out, watching. I want to thank you for getting this country moving again, and also working again.
TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much.
MIKE POMPEO (CIA chief): Mr President, it’s an honour to serve as your CIA director. It’s an incredible privilege to lead the men and women who are providing intelligence so that we can do the national security mission. And in the finest traditions of the CIA, I’m not going to share a damn thing in front of the media. [Laughter]
DAVID SHULKIN (Veterans Affairs): Mr President, thank you for your support and commitment to honouring our responsibility to America’s veterans. I know that this is personally very important to you. I have the great honour of being able to represent the 21 million American veterans that have done such great things for this country and I’ve worked every day to make sure that we’re honouring that responsibility. Thank you.
TRUMP: Thank you very much.
STEVE MNUCHIN: Thank you, Mr President. It was a great honour travelling with you around the country for the last year and an even greater honour to be here serving on your cabinet. On behalf of everybody at the Treasury, I can assure you we are focused on creating sustained economic growth, sweeping tax reform, and fighting terrorism with sanctions and all other programmes within our control.
BEN CARSON (Housing and Urban Development): Mr President, it’s been a great honour to – to work with you. Thank you for your strong support of HUD and for all the others around this table that I’ve worked with. We’re making tremendous progress at converting to a business model. Already seeing tremendous savings there.
REINCE PRIEBUS (Chief of Staff): On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda and the American people. And we’re going to continue to work very hard every day to accomplish those goals.
TRUMP: Thank you, very much. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much.
Well, Socratic dialogue it wasn’t. It seemed to be an exercise in fawning, as one after another they seemed to enter into an encomium bidding war. I see your ‘honoured’ and raise you a ‘greatest privilege’. Aah, but I see your ‘greatest privilege’ and raise you a ‘blessing’. And Donald Trump sat in his slightly taller chair than everyone else, a self-satisfied smile on his face as he listened to the reports, head nodding knowingly, feeling very much taller than everyone else. This was less first among equals than first among minnows.
Certainly none of the interventions had quite the impact of the Treasury Secretary, William Windom at the end of the nineteenth century, as he spoke on a subject dear to this president’s heart, trade: ‘As a poison in the blood permeates arteries, veins, nerves, brain and heart, and speedily brings paralysis or death, so does a debased or fluctuating currency permeate all arteries of trade, paralyze all kinds of business and brings disaster to all classes of people.’ After that elegantly crafted peroration Windom sat down, lit a cigar, took a sip of water – and suffered a fatal heart attack.
Nothing as dramatic has befallen any of Donald Trump’s cabinet – but many nevertheless have found their careers cut short prematurely. The current trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, made the joke in that round-table presidential love-in, that he was late for work because he’d got stuck in the swamp. Of all the insurgent messages that Donald Trump unleashed during the 2016 presidential election, the one that perhaps struck a chord with most people across the political divide was his promise to ‘drain the swamp’.
The self-serving, self-perpetuating élites of Washington DC would get what was coming to them, according to the candidate. Their swanky lunches in expensive eateries, paid for by ubiquitous lobbyists, would be over. The fact-finding trips abroad, the best corporate hospitality money could buy, the black Lincoln town cars with blacked-out windows ferrying them around, the revolving door between government and fabulously paid jobs in corporate-land would all become a thing of the past. Now there was a new sheriff in town who was going to bring a new ethical code. No longer would money buy influence. And the people that Donald Trump had chosen to be in his cabinet would be the servants of the people, not of well-heeled, tan-leather-upholstered, made-to-measure suited, coiffed special interest groups. Corruption had met its nemesis; it would be relentlessly rooted out, and those guilty of such malfeasance would be unceremoniously and brutally put to the sword. Or at least that was the theory. The reality turned out to be somewhat different.
From that group of people, who sat together for the first cabinet meeting in June 2017, it is remarkable how many have either been forced out or quit, and how many others have big, murky ethical clouds hanging over them. If this was a new dawn for ethical government, it didn’t really look like it. And how many who stood their ground against the President, because they disagreed with this or that aspect of policy, either quit or were pushed out.
Scott Pruitt, who’d been put in charge of the Environment Protection Agency, was very firmly a Donald Trump favourite. They spoke the same language. He shared all the president’s instincts on the climate – broadly speaking, that climate change was a ‘hoax’ – and he set about his mission with gusto. He had come from Oklahoma, where he served as that state’s attorney general. While in that role he was one of the principal architects of the legal battle against Obama’s climate change policies, repeatedly suing the agency that he would soon head. He described himself in his biography for that job as ‘a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda’. So when he was appointed its new leader, many staffers thought the President had put in a fox to run the chicken coop.
And so it turned out. He took a scythe to many of the environmental regulations that Barack Obama had introduced – on car emission standards, or industrial pollutants. Environmental scientists in his department who took a differing view were ostracised – or fired. Along with Trump, whose own view was that ‘global warming was created by and for the Chinese’, Pruitt oversaw the efforts to dismantle systematically the major climate regulations. Trump announced at the beginning of June 2017 that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate accords. Pruitt followed that up a few months later with a pledge that America would withdraw from the Clean Power Plan, a regulatory structure introduced by Barack Obama to limit greenhouse gas emissions on a state-by-state basis.
The Obama-run EPA estimated the Clean Power Plan could prevent 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children. But when Pruitt was challenged about the health consequences of doing away with the Clean Power Plan, he argued that the policy was bureaucratic overreach.
There was no doubting Pruitt’s efficiency in driving through the Trump agenda – remember Donald Trump during the presidential election campaign had pledged to get coal miners mining again, blast furnaces blasting again, and pipelines built to assist the growth of the US economy. The regulatory shackles were going to be unlocked, and in Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump had his man with a set of keys to do that.
There was also no doubting he liked to live high on the taxpayer’s dime. By the time he eventually stepped down/was fired, there were multiple ethics investigations into his behaviour – from within his own department, and from Congress as well. Some of the issues were banal, but hilarious: he enlisted his security detail to run a series of personal errands, including driving him around to find bottles of a lotion that he particularly liked, which were only to be found in Ritz-Carlton hotel bedrooms. Or – my other favourite – Millan Hupp, a Pruitt staffer, would tell congressional investigators that she had to reach out to the Trump International Hotel in Washington after Pruitt said he thought there was ‘an old mattress that he could purchase’ from the President’s hotel. Really? He wanted a mattress on the cheap?
His response to these claims came in an usual response. He attached to his financial disclosure form a broad paragraph with this sentence. “To the extent that I am aware of specific allegations, I dispute the facts
asserted and accordingly am not aware of reportable gifts.” And then he said if fresh disclosures were made, he would address them as and when they came.
Then there were the really quite big ethical skirmishes: insisting on taking private jets or military aircraft, or at the very least flying first class. He justified that by saying it was for security purposes, naturally – citing the ‘toxic environment’ in politics and implying he was less likely to face threats if he was in a nice, plump, comfy first-class seat. EPA memos obtained by CNN said that if Pruitt flew economy, the occasional ‘lashing out from passengers’ could ‘endanger his life’. (NOTE TO SELF: next time the BBC tell me I have to fly economy, I will use the Pruitt ‘life in danger’ defence.)
But this was the least of it. When he was in Washington he stayed at the home of a lobbyist for a peppercorn rent. Pruitt lived for about six months in a Capitol Hill condominium owned by a health care lobbyist whose husband had lobbied his own department, the EPA. He paid a fraction of the market rate. Ridiculously, this came to light after a former deputy chief of staff told congressional investigators the energy lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, called Pruitt’s chief of staff to complain that Pruitt was behind on rent, and the couple eventually evicted Pruitt by changing the code on the locks. Again Pruitt does not deny any of this. His spokesman merely said that there was no link between any policy decision he made and the price he paid – and who he paid – for his housing. Well that’s good then.
