Trump's Cabinet Heaps Praise Amid Unpopular War, Economy

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:02]Tonight, members of President Trump's cabinet can sleep a little bit easier knowing that they aced their latest loyalty test.

[00:00:10]>> Thank you for your leadership, sir. The fact that we have dedicated presidential leadership is really what's made this possible.

[00:00:15]>> President Trump, under your leadership, uh we've opened up uh lease sales on public lands. You turned Venezuela from a sanctioned adversary into a into a strategic ally in 45 minutes. Never happened in history before. We are more resilient to energy price fluctuations due to your energy dominance agenda.

[00:00:35]Resilience and prosperity have been the marks of your second term. There's only one man over the course of both presidency who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon.

[00:00:47]You created the conditions to ensure the American people and the world are safeguarded from this generational threat.

[00:00:53]>> Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again. You're leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known. I hear it everywhere I go.

[00:01:01]Please thank the president for putting us back on track. They thank you. They love you.

[00:01:09]The New York Times recently reviewed more than a dozen hours of these cabinet meetings and found that at least one in six sentences spoken by Trump's cabinet members offered the president some sort of praise. For example, it revealed that Marco Rubio flattered Trump the most. JD Vance topped the list for insulting Trump's political opponents. Pete Hgsith repeatedly declared that no other president could single-handedly end conflicts and Scott Bessant and Howard Lutnik credited Trump with saving America. The praise parade is a welcome show for Trump who has a lot on his plate right now. An ugly midterm battle ahead, an economy stretching Americans to their limit, and the ongoing war with Iran. But Trump has vowed not to let political pressure rush him into making a deal.

[00:01:57]>> They thought they were going to outweight me. You know, we'll outweight him. He's got the midterms. I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it. They know that. Very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I'm doing that for the world. I'm not doing it just for us.

[00:02:16]>> Um well, you know, look, it doesn't care about the midterms. he cares more about the the outcome. I think that's a reasonable thing for a president to say, but he probably should care about the midterms because I think that the war and the midterms are so intertwined at this point. Uh the Americans are unhappy, not just with how he's handling the war, but with how he's handling the economy and gas prices are continuing to put downward pressure on these numbers for him. And it's mystifying to hear him refer to yesterday's race in Texas as though it's some kind of indication of how much he doesn't care or some reason a clear explanation as to why because I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. That Paxton um race, the decision to get involved in a race to essentially elevate a candidate who has so many negatives going for him. Um it it doesn't make any sense at all. It complicates his party's ability to get anything done in Congress going forward.

[00:03:07]Um it it it gives him someone who he's going to be at odds with in the Senate for many many months to come. Um and all of it, including that strange circus in that cabinet meeting, like seems like a president who's utterly detached from the fact that his policies simply have not produced the golden age that was promised when he was accepting the nomination and accepting actually no accepting the office being inaugurated the second time. Um it's just uh it's an extraordinarily bad look for him. it.

[00:03:36]None of this suggests that he actually has tapped into what the American people are concerned about. And the most dire aspect of this is that things are likely to get worse. We've seen these economic reports that continue to indicate that things are are looking diceier for the consumer, but also that the market itself is under a tremendous amount of pressure, and we're not exactly certain how that's going to turn out. So my suspicion is that by November things will look much bleeer for the administration than they currently do and they won't be able to hide behind any of this rhetoric or people going around the table saying nice things about >> I mean well the public praise probably mirrors the private um comments that the president is hearing and if he's getting if he's only being told everything is great and perfect and everything is everybody's thriving that seems like bad information ahead of >> a midterm. If he was being told that, he also wouldn't say, you know what, I'm going to make my decisions on Iran based upon what I think is right, not based upon the polling, not based upon the midterms. Um, yeah, like he's putting himself in a difficult spot with the Senate. U, a 30point defeat for Senator Cornin was not something that was decided by Donald Trump's endorsement.

[00:04:46]Um the house is certainly not enthusiastic about where gas prices are, but the reality is like a lot of these factors were either baked in by virtue of the way that the a midterm is going to go with a president, you know, who holds the House and the Senate and the thermostatic reaction among the American people. And and I'm I remain and I've said this before, I remain actually optimistic for an outcome in Iran specifically because the Iranians know that if Donald Trump cares more about the midterms than about what the the content of the substance of the negotiation of that deal are, that he would fold much more quickly because it's going to take some time for gas prices to go back down. It's going to take some time for the American public to feel like this has not been a tremendous burden on them financially.

[00:05:38]The fact that Donald Trump is willing to wait that out, uh, if I'm a congressional Republican, I'm not pleased. I'm frustrated. But when it comes to actually huing to the fidelity of what may be in the best interest of the American people as opposed to the best interest of the American of the Republican party, Donald Trump's siding with the people. Let me play one more piece of what he said uh in that cabinet meeting today. This time about Oman.

[00:06:03]Listen, >> nobody's going to control it. We're going to watch over it. We'll watch over it, but nobody's going to control it.

[00:06:10]That's part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it.

[00:06:13]Nobody's going to control it. It's international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, so we'll have to blow them up.

[00:06:22]>> Yeah, let's let's not do that.

[00:06:24]>> We like the Omanis. They're good people.

[00:06:26]We have a free trade agreement. We got basing rights there. We're good.

[00:06:29]>> I'm not really sure what that is all about, but I guess it's worth noting that Trump has now um threatened one in 13 nations on this planet.

[00:06:41]>> Um the 15th time he's threatened a country since uh I guess he became president this second time around. I mean, is is the answer to I guess if if it's a nail and you got a hammer, the only thing that you can do is just use the hammer.

[00:06:58]>> Well, first of all, Abby, I want to tell you that you are the best host of all host. We've never had a better host in CNN history.

[00:07:05]The world would be a worse place were not for you. You've made everything better.

[00:07:08]>> You can keep your job a little bit longer.

[00:07:12]>> So, I mean, Donald Trump clearly is not going to win another going to win any peace prize. you know, he got the FIFA Peace Prize because he kind of bribed his way into that. But I mean, the guy doesn't have any sort of foreign policy chops. And so his only way to handle conflict is to talk a big game. And then when the big game doesn't pan out, he's got to do something to deliver. So he's got conflict now in Iran. He's trying to negotiate what's going on with Ukraine, which he's been he's been away from that. He's just got just got out of Venezuela a few months ago and he's still kind of negotiating what's going on there. He's threatening Cuba at the same time. Meanwhile, he's got our allies wondering what's happening with Greenland and Canada and threatening to invade Mexico. And there's never been a president in my lifetime, maybe in history, who has been so disastrous in terms of international relations.

[00:08:08]>> Yeah. You were alive in the Carter administration, weren't you? I mean, no.

[00:08:12]Like, but let's be honest, like Venezuela is going actually very well.

[00:08:15]We don't talk about in the US because it doesn't really help narratively.

[00:08:18]Venezuela is >> the people of Venezuela are >> overwhelmingly like Donald Trump better off today than they were before. Just today there was a new report that came out today data of their expectations of his life getting better or worse. I mean, it is let me tell you something inverse of what it was.

[00:08:34]>> Let me tell you something. There's a new report that came out today. said that in that Deli Rodriguez, the current president of Venezuela, acting president of Venezuela, that the Trump administration is telling federal prosecutors not to go after her because they're they're concerned that that that she may not be able to to to do their job, their bidding for her, for him. So, they're not concerned about prosecuting her for the legal violations she may have made. They're not concerned about the people in the human rights in Venezuela. Trump is concerned about what looks best.

[00:09:01]>> Sure. Sure. That's the legal side. The three most popular people in Venezuela right now. One, Karina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Number two, Marco Rubio. Number three is Donald Trump. I mean, his approval rating in Venezuela is positive.

[00:09:12]>> Things that he mentioned.

[00:09:13]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. We can go through the entire Well, what I would say is like I I watched those cabinet meet that cabinet meeting and I was thinking, do these people realize we can hear them? And it it is and this is a mistake I think the Democrats made as well, is that you're trying to tell people the reality they're experiencing, they're not actually experiencing. So when you have Kelly Leler talking about, oh, the greatest economy, nobody feels that. Like you're just lying to people and they lose respect for you because you can't tell this dude the truth and it feels increasingly like when you see these meetings or just in general the treatment of Trump, it's like they're trying to plate the the uncle who's lost it. I mean, and so the only way and people know that the way to his heart is through flattery. And so they're doing this over and over again. And I hope these people understand that some of the decisions that they are making right now are decisions that historically are going to look terrible. So 10 years from now when people are playing that meeting and maybe this country has recovered from the miss and maybe it hasn't and they know that you sat there in your position of leadership and you did absolutely nothing but glaze the president over terrible decisions.

[00:10:16]Everybody's going to remember that.

[00:10:17]>> That's right, Pete. Well, one, clearly President Trump doesn't conduct foreign policy the way Keith wants him to do it, but there has been a ton of successes in this administration. But I do want to point I I want to I want to point I want to make a point on this cabinet thing because one of my jobs in the George W.

[00:10:34]Bush White House was to take the media into cabinet room meetings. And typically you'd go in at the very beginning, the president would tell you what they would talk about or you'd come in at the end and he would recap what was discussed. maybe take one or two questions only the president and that was the end of the story. You take the media out. In this administration, the media has much more access, more access than they have had to any president in the modern era. The reason why the New York Times has 12 hours of footage to analyze is because Donald Trump lets them in there that long. If you had done it for any other president, it would be 12 minutes and it would be only the president.

[00:11:16]But it is a window. Listen of what they're observing.

[00:11:19]>> It's a window into our government. You get to hear access from cabinet members.

[00:11:24]Access is not the people who love end of everything. Access is not the the beginning and the end of the story. To to Camil's point substance substance matters. When the president spends when the president spends 10 minutes talking about a reflecting pool, I think that also reflects on his priorities. So, I think that's the other piece of what we're talking about here is what are they actually talking about, not just how long are they talking and who's witnessing it. I mean, I think that matters more to the American people. All right. Next.