Arrant brown-nosing in the Cabinet

June 12, 2017 • 12:30 pm

Check out this short video (I haven’t seen more of it, but would be glad to get a link). Unless it’s misrepresented, which I doubt given the source, it reminds me of Stalin during the Thirties, any of the North Korean dictators, or Chairman Mao.

Bradd Jaffy is senior news editor and writer for NBC Nightly News

Here’s a long and more nauseating version from CNN:

UPDATE (h/t to Grania): A couple of days ago Steve Pinker tw**ted an article from Vox, “The Bullshitter-in-Chief“, which is relevant to the above.  Discussing Trump’s craziness and lies, the author argues that what Trump is really doing is testing loyalty and making his staff cohere. As the article says:

But George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen argues that this kind of thing [the big kerfuffle about crowd size at the Inauguration, and Trump asking his people to agree that it was big] can serve a strategic role.

The key issues are trust and loyalty. By asking subordinates to echo his bullshit, Trump accomplishes two goals:

  • He tests the loyalty of his subordinates. In Cowen’s words, “if you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid.”

  • The other is that it turns his aides into members of a distinct tribe. “By requiring subordinates to speak untruths, a leader can undercut their independent standing, including their standing with the public, with the media and with other members of the administration.”

112 thoughts on “Arrant brown-nosing in the Cabinet”

    1. You’re a not the only one.

      I don’t know whether to feel sorry for these people or not. Of course, they took the job in the first place. Most of us wouldn’t have, but some would even if they hated Trump considering the higher principle is serving the country.

      Doing this to people will ultimately backfire I think. Some probably believe it, but those who don’t will want to get back at him for it. I bet several went home and started their anti-Trump books to be published either as soon as they get another job, or the administration ends.

      And Trump has his arms crossed – body language that makes it obvious anyone who isn’t suitably effusive is out.

      1. Mussolini was another one who did the arm crossing thing. I just don’t want to think about it.

          2. Actually, he wasn’t “shot while trying to escape”; he and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were shot (executed) the following afternoon after he and fifty other fascist leaders were found hiding in a German convoy that Italian Communist partisans attacked and halted. The partisans let the Germans proceed if they turned over all the Italians among them and Mussolini was eventually discovered slumped down in a vehicle disguised as a German Private. Of the fifty, 16 were shot on that next day as well, with a further 10 executed over the next two days (Wikipedia).

  2. All the constant need for ego-stroking admiration, elaborate ridiculous compliments and loyalty pledges…maybe Trump realy is god!

  3. This is something I would expect to see from old videos of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qadhafi. Simply pathological.

      1. Like I said in a comment on the Yahoo article on this appalling, pathetic display, “This man is rapidly crossing the line from “simply insane” to, “dangerously insane”….

        1. The worst part is that, even though someone’s insane, it doesn’t mean that they can’t continue to be very, very clever….

      1. Perhaps it will occur to some enterprising soul to juxtapose video of Trump and Hussein online.

  4. Trump’s narcissist ego is like a bottomless pit that must be fed constantly. It IS nauseating, no need to apologize, GB James. I agree. I don’t understand why this farce is continuing. I can only hope the investigation continues and turns up his dirty financial dealings. Follow the money! Meanwhile, his anti-science agenda and disdain for the separation of church and state continues and damages our nation more every day he remains in power.

    1. Stunts like this illustrate trump’s motives for picking so many unqualified, inexperienced, and radical right people as Cabinet members. That entire room was certainly a cesspool of “alternative fact” regurgitators. The accelerating pace in which trump and his ilk are pushing human progress backwards is my definition of “dark energy.”

  5. He also exhibited the inevitable delusional features of extreme narcissism by claiming, with nobody to argue, that he has done more than any president in his first 6 months except for FDR.

    All hail the super-genius!

      1. Let’s come up with some more new names for POTUS:

        BLOATUS
        DOLTUS
        OLDGOATUS

        Cheeto-in-Chief
        Dough Boy-in-Chief
        Liar-in-Chief
        Criminal-in-chief

        Smallmouth Ass (His mouth does look somewhat like an anus, eh?!)

        Small/Quickhand Don

        He’s a psychopathic pervert. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot, or derriere, or some other body part, with the election of this whatever-he-is. I can only hope he’s one of a kind (but, unfortunately he procreated and some his kids seem to have learned a lot of bad stuff from him.)

        1. If he just stopped relying on Acme🐾🐾⚡️(Can’t find rocket or anvil emojis…)

  6. I saw some internet news from a David Badash dated 12 June that seems to be about this same Cabinet Meeting but covering very short video of other parts. The amazing thing to me stated there is that this is the first cabinet meeting held by trump, after 143 days in office. That seems almost unreal. So we only get together every three months or so and kiss butt.

  7. It sounds ominous. I hope we are not replaying this to school children in 50 years as another example of how nations gradually descend into a hellhole.

    1. If it became that sort of hellhole why would anyone be allowed to play it at all?

  11. I have no idea how many lawyers Trump has working for him now, but very soon he will need a large truck load. I guess for many lawyers, this guy is what they get up in the morning for.

    1. I also just saw on CNN, Chuck Shumer’s office doing a mock repeat of the Trump meeting so it is already off to the races.

    2. Actually Trump couldn’t find any D.C. law firms with the needed expertise. Not that there aren’t several that could have done the job. It’s just that they didn’t want to touch him with a ten foot deposition. Mumble, mumble, other clients, potential conflicts of interest. They don’t need that kind of publicity.

      What he did resort to, is the guy who did his civil law suits in the past. You know, threatening letters to his sexual assault victims and SLAPP suits for anyone dissing The Trump, that sort of thing. He has already gone before the cameras to make matters worse for his client.

        1. @rickflick It stems from a 6th June report on Yahoo! News [link below] by Michael Isikoff who quotes ‘sources’ – the story has been picked up by other news agencies since, with extra input, but still just sources:-
          https://www.yahoo.com/news/four-top-law-firms-turned-requests-represent-trump-122423972.html

          I’m inclined to believe it. According to the report the Trump team are still looking for D.C. legal strategy advisors & I’m sure they’ll find a firm who’ll work anonymously for money up front! OTOH I don’t think it’ll be easy to find a mug who’ll stand up for the Trumpster openly – there’s no upside to doing so with a client who will not follow simple instructions e.g. STFU & we’ll do the talking

      2. The book on Donald Trump, client: won’t pay, won’t follow legal advice.

        Who needs that nonsense?

  13. Discussing Trump’s craziness and lies, the author argues that what Trump is really doing is testing loyalty and making his staff cohere

    I’ve made a similar argument about religions and campus protestors. Getting somebody to concede a point that might be true doesn’t tell you anything about their commitment to the cause. Getting them to agree with something ludicrous means they are prepared to suspend their critical faculties entirely. It’s not surprising that religions are full of resurrections, flying horses and whatnot.

  14. Trump’s Republican enablers are like the battered spouse of an abusive drunk. (“He’s soo nice, except when he gets angry and starts tweeting! Look a the shiny new Supreme Court justice he gave us for our anniversary, just like he promised!”)

    And that extends from his cabinet to White House staff to Republican congresscritters with their ludicrous defense that “he’s new at this.”

    1. Unlike actual battered spouses I have no sympathy for the Republicans in this. If there was ever any misconception that some of them were merely principled believers in dubious ideas, support for Trump should throw such doubts out the window. There is no conscientious core to Republican ideology. It’s 100% about giving the wealthy, themselves included, giant tax breaks, and everything else is so much window dressing.

  15. The beginning of the video is missing when Trump clubs Albert Anselmi and John Scalise to death with a baseball bat.

    (I may be confusing this with an earlier incident)

    1. Probably the one on Fifth Avenue.

      A baseball bat to the heads of the present cabinet members? Trump has so incapacitated my moral compass I am not sure I would be horrified or amused by such an event. I wonder if someone could actually mortally wound themselves with a bat…

  16. I have read that Stalin rooted out disloyalty in his ruling circle by throwing parties where tongues were loosened with vodka.

  17. What I don’t see mentioned in the quotes from Steven Pinker and Tyler Cowan is how all this in-group vs out-group strategy has long been employed by religious cults.

    If you can say with a straight face that you believe all the improbable claims made by a cult and adopt all their defining symbols, then you get to claim the benefits of membership.

    The original inventors of the Abrahamic religions seem to have taken this the furthest, but Christians and Muslims have their own foolish but mandatory claims to other everyone else by othering themselves.

    Who really believes that a monkey-god is walking around with a hole in his chest in which reside two other gods, happily ensconced in his beating heart?

  18. AS has been pointed out on Twitter, this is pretty much how King Lear starts . . . King Leer sponsored by Delta?

    1. I’ve compared Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric to Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia before.

        1. We won’t know until it’s finita la commedia in Trump’s case (to mix my stage terminology badly 🙂 ).

      1. Where do you get “nothing more than that”? And I cite an example in a comment below.

        I am AGREEING with the point Cowen made, this is technique that is much used these days.

        1. I have no idea what kind of business environment you have experienced but this is not anything close to normal. If you worked in a kiss the bosses ass business such as this Trump meet we are seeing here, you are likely working for jerks. You are also wasting lots of money. No manager worth beans hires a bunch of yes men and women to work for him. Just save the money, make all decisions yourself and spend a lot of time looking in the mirror.

        2. I had understood you to be implying that it was SoP in corporate America, Craw.

          It strikes me as more akin to the Politburo praising Stalin after the Great Patriotic War.

          “Cult of personality,” I believe, would be the terminology juste.

    2. I call BS on that one, Craw.

      I’ve spent my adult life in the business world, now drawing near it’s close, and have never seen anything like this kind of sycophantic bullshit qualifying as “team building”.

      This is the kind of team building that Kim Jong-un would expect.

      1. At the Fortune 10 company where I work we just had a training session where everyone had to come up with such “feedback”. It’s never honest, it’s always pap.

        1. Being unable to distinguish this from “pap” strikes me as extreme myopia. This isn’t “pap”, it is sycophantic groveling. No team was ever built that way.

  22. No dissenters being assassinated so far, or thrown in jail. Still safe to ridicule it — well done Chuck Schumer!

    But we can see how it starts. Both pathetic and horrifying.

    I suppose the US has dodged a bullet here in terms of fascism, thanks to Trump’s extraordinary stupidity and ineptitude, but it will a long, dangerous and disgusting 8 years.

      1. He would never do that, it would require a sense of humor and a knowledge of history.

    1. Yes, and that idiot Newt had just a few days earlier praised Mueller and said what a great guy he was, couldn’t get a better man. Some of the Trumpees were even saying Mueller should be fired. Crazy or just stupid that is not going to happen.

      I think Mueller was a Marine who served in Vietnam and that was just for starters.

      1. Yeah, Marine Recon, led a combat platoon for a while. Came outta Vietnam in ’69 with a bronze star, purple heart, and two commendation medals.

        Also, like James Comey, Mueller is a life-long registered Republican, although neither of them has ever been considered partisan.

        The Donald’s got yooge problems; Mueller’s assembling a killer legal team.

        1. I am fervently hoping Mueller is kept in place and keeps at it until the end.

          If der Drumpfenführer fires Mueller, then we a re definitely in “Saturday Night Massacre” territory.

          But, as someone said just above, der Drumpfenführer probably doesn’t have the sense of history to even know what that phrase means.

          1. If Trump cans Mueller, I thinks it’s fair to conclude that whatever he’s trying to cover up is even worse than the Defcon heat he’ll get for doing it.

            I don’t think Trump’ll pull that trigger yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen once Mueller starts digging around in Trump’s dirty Russian laundry.

  24. I would have no problem believing it. We’ve already heard from sources inside the cabinet that, if you want to get his attention in any way, you have to praise him constantly first. As I’ve said before, this is all about his ego. He doesn’t care about the responsibilities or role of the Presidency; he just wants to get off on it.

  25. It’s interesting the way such leaders who project power and confidence inspire such deference despite actually being foolish and corrupt.

  26. I CANNOT believe this. It has to be a joke or a hoax. It turns my stomach to see all these men and women offering their p***y for Trump to grab it. This cannot happen in America.

  28. Donald J Trump is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I have known in my life.

    1. I have some waterfront land I’d like to sell you. Building on piles will take care of the tidal problems ….

    1. The women, maybe; the men seem more likely to be suffering membrum flaccidos.

  32. Bill Clinton got the same treatment in the White House … but at least he had the propriety to get his one-on-one in a closet off the Oval Office.

  33. Only an extreme narcissist would allow this cringe worthy film to see the light of day. You can almost sense the embarrassment of having to contribute , to not use exactly the same words & to smile in a non-Duchenne manner !!

    1. Shall one anticipate hearing Sean Spicer or his assigns utter words to-the-effect that these were all genuine, unsolicited warm burblings? Or that Trump, as a private corporate tyrant, has been so accustomed to such obsequies(?) that he is naively and innocently non-culpable?

  34. TL;DR all comments but a search saw nothing about McMaster so I don’t think anyone mentioned this: The general, rather than licking Trump’s rump instead said how proud he was to be representing US troops from all over the world.

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