Trump’s 'autopilot' Cabinet meeting shows he’s 'in bigger trouble than he thinks'

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 26, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

President Donald Trump held one of his regular cabinet meetings on Tuesday afternoon, and amid a growing list of heavily publicized scandals and his own plummeting popularity, one Democratic strategist argued that the affair showed that he his "in bigger trouble than he thinks."

Writing for The Hill on Wednesday, "veteran Democratic strategist" Max Burns analyzed the "directionless" cabinet meeting in unsparing terms. He lambasted the various secretaries as "so preoccupied with propping up Trump’s fragile ego that they have lost even a passing interest in actually governing" and concluded that "absolutely no one" is "really running the country."

There are various reasons, Burns explained, why this meeting came "at a tough psychological moment for the president." Just last week, Trump's national approval rating fell by five points to 36%, the lowest ever recording by the long-running Gallup poll. The poll also found that Trump's approval ratings on some of the key issue that have propelled his election victories -- like immigration, the economy and foreign policy -- are also now underwater, signaling an voter base that is no longer happy about anything he is doing, as consumers prices continue to skyrocket, jobs dry up and ICE deportation raids leave a bad taste in the mouths of many onlookers.

The meeting also comes on the heels of a ballooning scandal surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom a Washington Post report found to have ordered a second strike on survivors of an initial boat strike in the Caribbean Sea, an move that many experts believe would amount to a war crime or simply outright murder. After initially denying the story, the White House ultimately acknowledged that the strike played out largely as detailed in the report, and Hegseth himself boasted about the boat strike campaign at the meeting.

“We’ve only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,” Hegseth said, though as Burns noted, the Pentagon has acknowledged that the identities of many of the people on the boats are unknown, and evidence of criminality has not been presented to the public.

Again, Burns explained, these strikes are another issue the Trump administration is digging its heels in on, despite only 29% of Americans approving of them.

“You people are crazy,” Trump said to reporters at the meeting, addressing questions about the mounting concerns surrounding his presidency. “I’ll let you know when something is wrong.”

"Really?" Burns wrote in response. "If this is what the country looks like when things are going well, Trump is in bigger trouble than he thinks."

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