President Donald J. Trump begins the public portions of his Cabinet meetings by going around the table having all of the Cabinet members praise Trump to the heavens.
How embarrassing.
Embarrassing for Trump, who is so insecure that he insists that others publicly praise him. But also embarrassing for the members of the Cabinet, who have chosen to publicly debase themselves for the chance to hold power (and, for those named Vance and Rubio, the possibility of holding yet more power in the future).
I’ve attended an awful lot of meetings with powerful people in my life — CEOs, managing partners, and the like. Not one has insisted on starting with praise of the boss before moving on to the rest of the agenda. In fact, if you’d tried to start a presentation by flattering the boss, most bosses would have shut you up. Those who didn’t shut you up would have simply fired you.
That doesn’t mean folks don’t suck up to the boss. Of course they do. Folks flatter the boss in private. They laugh at his or her jokes. They stay at the company holiday party until five minutes after the boss leaves. But no boss insists on reverential praise in public.
Except Trump.
What a sad, pathetic little man.
Foreign leaders have learned this lesson. Praise Trump publicly, and perhaps he’ll treat you better. Heads of state across Europe now play this disgraceful, but effective game.
Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize, recently gave her prize to Trump. She accompanied that gift, naturally, with flattery. If you’d like Trump’s help to install you as the leader of Venezuela, flatter the man.
A person with a shred of dignity would have refused to accept Machado’s prize.
Not our guy.
I checked the comments on Breitbart to see what the Trump morons loyalists were saying about Machado’s presentation. The loyalists figure Machado was sincere: “She said great things about Trump. It was touching. He must be a great man, and she sees it.”
Did those commenters miss the way Cabinet meetings start? What’s your explanation for that? Just coincidence?
Trump is not great. He’s a sad, pathetic little man.
John McCain was captured in Vietnam and then declined an early release from prison because he feared the North Vietnamese would use his release to score public relations points. Private Bone Spurs didn’t like McCain.
Bone Spurs said he likes the guys who don’t get captured.
Like himself, maybe. Avoid the draft; avoid the risk of capture.
Trump knows what a real hero is, and he knows that he doesn’t look like one. That’s what really bothers Trump about McCain.
Guys who died on the beaches of Normandy were “suckers and losers.”
Right. I can see Trump going over the side of a Higgins boat on June 6, 1944, into freezing water, in the face of enemy fire, at Normandy Beach.
Wait — my aching bone spurs!
Only once in history — in the aftermath of 9/11 — has any member of NATO invoked Article 5, which says that an attack on one NATO member will be deemed an attack on all. Our NATO allies heeded the United States’ call to duty. Those allies paid a price for their loyalty. Of the roughly 3,500 service members from NATO countries who were killed in Afghanistan, about 1,000 were from countries other than the United States. But last week Trump said of those 1,000 dead that the U.S. never “needed them.” According to Trump, “they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”
Tell that to the grieving sons and daughters, you sad, pathetic little man.
On the night before D-Day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter in the event that the Normandy invasion failed. He praised the troops and took all the blame for the failure.
When President Donald Trump was asked if he took responsibility for the problems with COVID testing, he heroically responded, “No. I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Of course not.
You sad, pathetic little man.
What president — indeed, what person — would give visitors free admission to national parks on their birthday, post insulting plaques about former presidents on the walls of the White House, or put their name before that of the assassinated John F. Kennedy on the facade of the Kennedy Center?
Yes, yes: The answers to those, and all the other, questions are the same:
A sad, pathetic little man.
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
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