President Donald Trump has always loved hearing fulsome praise from his hand-picked cabinet at meetings that can run for two to three hours while each department leader sounds off on how wonderful he is and recounting his administration’s most recent wins.
But not this time.
Trump on Thursday abruptly ended what was billed as the first cabinet meeting of the new year without taking any questions from reporters and without hearing from one of his most prominent — and recently most troublesome — cabinet secretaries, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Instead, after reading prepared remarks filled with his usual — and often inaccurate — boasts about the state of the U.S. economy with some announcements about re-opening Venezuelan airspace and a request for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to stop bombing Kyiv for a week due to the cold weather, Trump dispensed with his usual practice of letting cabinet officers go around the large Nixon-era table to offer their own remarks and instead called on a series of hand-picked advisers.
He started with his roving peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, then gave the floor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Small Business Administration boss Kelly Loeffler and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before asking Vice President JD Vance if he’d deliver any closing remarks.
Vance declined to do so and quipped that he was only attending “for the free coffee.”
Trump, who claimed the truncated session had been “amazing” and said he liked the format “much better than going around for three hours,” then ended the meeting at which point his aides began to shriek at the assembled reporters to leave the room.
Noem, who was seated at the far end of the table to Trump’s left, did not speak a word during the roughly 90-minute session, nor did Trump acknowledge her presence.
It was a stark contrast from the previous nine cabinet meetings held since Trump’s return to power just over a year ago.
Each of those meetings inevitably became multi-hour affairs complete with lengthy question-and-answer sessions with reporters, who often put questions not just to the president but to the various cabinet secretaries and advisers in attendance.
The uncharacteristically short cabinet meeting — and the pointed snub of his Homeland Security secretary — comes as she remains under intense scrutiny on account of her response to the fatal shooting of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday.
After Border Patrol agents fired shots into Pretti’s back within five seconds of wrestling him to the ground after one officer removed a holstered pistol from Pretti’s waist, Noem and Border Patrol official Greg Bovino both falsely claimed that Pretti had brandished the weapon or approached officers with the intent of shooting them.
Noem claimed on Saturday the shooting had been the consequence of “a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement,” even though Pretti never drew his weapon, which he had a permit to carry, and did not confront the agents before he was tackled after trying to help a woman who’d been shoved by a CBP agent.
She also falsely accused him of having “reacted violently” when agents attempted to disarm him — a claim that appears to be contradicted by video of the shooting.
Noem has since defended her false statements by attributing them to talking points provided by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — the main architect of Trump’s mass deportation campaign — while Miller has in turn thrown Border Patrol personnel under the bus by claiming in a statement that he got the false information at issue from them.
Her handling of the situation has not just Democrats, but multiple Republicans on Capitol Hill calling for her to quit or be sacked — with Democrats threatening impeachment should she remain long enough for them to take control of Congress after this November’s midterm elections.
Trump has thus far said he has confidence in her, telling reporters this week that he won’t ask for her resignation because she is “doing a very good job.”
Despite Trump’s professions of support, he has a long history of jettisoning advisers and associates even after vouching for them, especially when members of his own party call for him to do so.
