President Donald Trump launched into a bizarre, stream-of-consciousness monologue to open a televised Cabinet meeting at the White House that went for 3 hours and 16 minutes.
The president veered into an awkward “bit” as he said looks were not important in politics, and suggested that if he praised Attorney General Pam Bondi’s physical attributes, his career would be over.
“I look at Pam. I would never say she’s beautiful, because that’s gonna be the end of my political career,” he said.
After the awkward compliment, Trump lurched from subject to subject without interruption as members of his Cabinet listened and occasionally laughed at his remarks.
At one point, he appeared to mix up the drug companies Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson, while claiming he was cutting prescription drug prices for Americans by 1,500 percent.
Trump said he’d only been at work in his second term for several months because he initially had to prepare by redecorating the Oval Office.
He also declared he planned to put a “very substantial” tariff on furniture.
And he offered an awkward explanation of artificial intelligence as he lauded his wife, Melania, for announcing Tuesday a new AI initiative for children.
“This is the new internet, the new computer, the new television, the new everything all put together in one,” he said.
Flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, Trump talked for just over 48 minutes, changing topics from the prices of fuel and eggs to Zuckerberg’s data center in Louisiana, to turning water supplies on in California, the unfair prices of pharmaceutical drugs, his dislike of windmills, slamming the “fake” media, and his plans to widen the use of the military in U.S. cities, including Baltimore and Chicago and bringing back the death penalty in Washington D.C.
At one point, he changed tack from transgender athletes to poke fun at the age of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, saying he looked like he was 100 years old.
Perhaps the only topic the 79-year-old president didn’t cover were concerns about his health, nor was he asked by reporters about the bruises on his hands or his “cankles.”
He did however launch attacks on Joe Biden, as per usual, California Governor Gavin “Newscum”, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and the “slob” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
“I’m willing to go to Chicago, which has a big trouble, but we have a governor that refuses to admit he has problems,” Trump said of Pritzker.
“Baltimore, Wes Moore was telling me, ‘I want to walk with the president.’ First, you’ve got to clean up your crime, because I’m not walking in Baltimore right now,” Trump told his Cabinet. “Baltimore is a hellhole.”
The president lavished praise on sidekicks Rubio and Heath Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Rubio looked momentarily nonplussed after Trump congratulated him for his work as Secretary of State and suggested he never needed to run for another position again because he was a perfect fit.
“Marco has been really—I think you’re born for this job. I don’t think you should ever run for another office, actually,” he said, as Rubio laughed awkwardly. “I don’t think you should, really. You’re so good at this. He is so good and everybody likes him.”
Rubio has been widely touted as a potential candidate for the Republican presidential ticket in 2028.
Trump made much of his self-proclaimed success in preventing crime in D.C. and appeared confused over whether being a dictator was a good thing.
“The line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime,” he said. “So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’ But I’m not a dictator. I just know how to stop crime.”
Trump held up an image of a data center being built by Zuckerberg’s Meta company, superimposed over Manhattan, to show its size.
“These are big things,” he said. “And they’re going up, a lot of them, are going up now. I don’t know that big.
“Actually, Mark is building four of them. And others are building similar places. And when these things open up, I’ll tell you what, our country—we’re leading China now.”
The Cabinet meeting continued for three hours and 16 minutes, with Trump tackling a myriad of new subjects as the session continued. “Our country is becoming very rich again,” he insisted, towards the end.
Earlier, he told how his father told him not to go into any restaurants with “dirty doors.”
Then he said Russia was “posturing” in the peace talks and said it was all bulls--t."
Trump’s Cabinet couldn’t get enough of their leader. Each member took turns to outdo one another with compliments.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer took the prize, proudly boasting of unfurling a massive banner on the side of her department’s headquarters featuring the president’s face.
“Mr. President,” she fawned. “I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.”
