Trump pulls unprecedented move as panic sets in - Another Day - Brian Tyler Cohen

[TexasTowelie]

BTC: Today, a first for Donald Trump and even reporters couldn't believe it. This is just another day.

With America still reeling from the tragic events in Minnesota, the president convened a Cabinet meeting today and packed the room with reporters. Because, as he's told us all along, this is the most transparent administration in our nation's history.

(cut to video)
Caitlin Collins: I'm not sure I've ever been at a Cabinet meeting covering the president, whether in this term, and this was his tenth Cabinet meeting so far in his second term, or in his first term where he did not take questions from reporters at the end. It's extremely rare for the president to do that. He went around the room and called on a handful of Cabinet secretaries, more than a handful probably, actually. But one that he notably did not call on was standing to my left, and that was the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Hey, hold on. There could be plenty of reasons for all of this. Maybe the president was feeling a tad shy this morning. Maybe Noem was dealing with a sore throat after going in for a little larynx lift. Or maybe Donald Trump just had more important business to attend to.

(cut to video)
Trump: Thousands of uh businesses, plants, equipment all over the country are being built right now. My friend who's very successful, I told you seriously overweight person. He takes the fat the fat pill or the fat shot. So this has been, I think, and a lot of people say it, the most successful year of any administration in American history.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Ah, guess he didn't. Yes, it is quite telling that the man who's never met a reporter he didn't want to denigrate and a compliment he didn't coordinate beforehand today decided to do things a little differently. I suppose Trump feared that merely a single question pertaining to the horrors that we've witnessed in Minneapolis could derail his perfectly banal and unnecessary meeting.

And it turns out there was also no amount of orchestrated praise from Kristi Noem that could distract the nation from her disastrous job as head of DHS. And that came even as a shock to some of Trump's biggest fans.

(cut to video)
Ainsley Earhardt: We're all closely watching the screen. If you ever see us looking away, it's because we're looking at the screen. We're all waiting to hear if Kristi Noem speaks.

Uh the president has said, "I have faith in Kristi Noem." He has noted that repeatedly when asked in questions. But it is notable Kristi Noem has not been heard from publicly since Saturday.

We know when Pete Hegseth was a little under fire uh for some of the the strikes um on Venezuela right off their shores. Uh he went to to Pete Hegseth immediately in in the Cabinet meeting. So we are waiting with baited breath to hear from Kristi Noem.

(cut to studio)
BTC: For Fox News seeing Donald Trump silence a woman is such a foreign idea. Well for free that is. Normally it takes him at least 130 grand. But just because Trump's chief puppy exterminator was told to zip it today that doesn't mean a few others in the room couldn't pick up the slack.

(cut to video)
Howard Lutnick: You are fixing everything with your policies. You have changed America and created the Golden Age.

Unidentified Cabinet Secretary: The Russians are doing things maybe that people wouldn't give them the credit for doing. And I think it's it's it always comes down to your indomitable spirit.

Scott Bessent: Mr. President, it was an honor to host you and as you said, the best rapper in the world, Nicki Minaj, at yesterday's Trump Accounts Summit.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Yes. I believe that all of us in this room can agree that no one spits the fly rhymes like Harajuku Barbie. Honestly, who among us hasn't twerked the night away to those body moving lyrics like this dude named Michael used to ride motorcycles. Dick bigger than a tower. I ain't talking about Eiffels. Pussy put his ass to sleep. Now he's selling me Nyquil.

Could just be me, but uh sounds like Scott Bessent is trying to book himself on someone's next tour now that his current job isn't going as well as he'd hoped.

Unsurprisingly, Pete Hegseth got on board today's praise train, too, and even saved a little for himself when talking about the recent raid on that sovereign nation of Venezuela.

(cut to video)
Pete Hegseth: No other military in the world could have could have executed the most sophisticated, powerful raid, not just in American history, I would say in world history.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Huh. I'm no world historian, but when it comes to recent raids, I think I know one man who might disagree with you {photo of Osama bin Laden displayed}. But that's just me because I normally think the most sophisticated raids are taken seriously from the top down and not necessarily viewed behind a thinly woven catering curtain.

Besides Kristi Noem, someone else notably absent from being called on to kiss Trump's ass today was Pam Bondi. And if I had a hunch, it might be because she's behind the other massive failure of this administration, the release of the Epstein files, or lack thereof.

Those files were required by law to be released on December 19th. And here we are in late January. And Bondi's most recent estimate on when we can see that campaign promise fulfilled in the near term. My god, between that statement and…

(cut to video)
Pam Bondi: It's sitting on my desk right now to review.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Pam Bondi is less an attorney general and more the foreman at the world's biggest bullshit factory. This is one of the most disastrous weeks for Donald Trump's presidency. and he can't escape the reality that right now he is viewed by millions as a terrible leader who traffics in nothing but lies. So what do you do when people point to your weaknesses? Well, you highlight your strengths.

(cut to video)
Trump: And because of the cold, extreme cold, they have the same that we do. Uh I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kiev and the cities and towns for a week and he agreed to do that. And I have to tell you, it was very nice. A lot of people said, "Don't waste the call. You're not going to get that." And he did it. And we're very happy that they did it.

(cut to studio)
BTC: My god. Scratch everything I said about Donald Trump not deserving the Nobel Peace Prize. He got his favorite war criminal to stop killing Ukrainians for one week. Because it's one thing to invade another country and murder millions of their civilians, but to do it when it's chilly outside, well, that's just heartless.

But knowing full well that he'd get panned for the obvious deviation from his standard marathon length unproductive meetings, Trump prepared with an excuse.

(cut to video)
Trump: We're not going to go through the whole table because the last time we had a press conference, it lasted for 3 hours and some people said “he closed his eyes.” Look, it got pretty boring.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Because you made it boring. Does Trump even know that he's dunking on himself? That's like Matt Gaetz responding to allegations that he pays for sex and going, "I'd love to get it for free, but look at me."

Clearly, the memo went around town that Republican members of Congress needed to get on TV and spin this situation any way they could. But since that didn't work, they got Kevin McCarthy instead.

(cut to video from Fox News)
Kevin McCarthy: This is where I want to give a lot of credit to President Trump. When this situation started, look at how he handled it. He sent Tom Homan up there. He started communications with the governor, with the mayor, and others. That really calmed a lot of people down.

(cut to studio)
BTC: First of all, Kevin, my dude, you don't have to do this anymore. This is a job for spineless sycophants who need to stay in Trump's good graces to keep their job in Congress. You already lost your job in Congress. Fly away, little bird. You're free now.

Also, it's so interesting where Kevin McCarthy places the clock on a situation starting. Some might say things started when Trump infiltrated Minneapolis with 3,000 ICE agents, but I guess others see the inevitable murders at the hands of those ICE agents to be when things really got rolling. I guess it's a real chicken and homicide scenario.

The reality is for an administration that keeps a tighter grip on the narrative than Lauren Boebert keeps on shall we say her dates ticket stub. What we are currently witnessing right here is a very significant step. not taking questions, silencing Cabinet officials, flooding the zone with the same tired lies about everything Dear Leader is doing that's created a windfall for our nation as a whole.

Donald Trump's entire presidency is built on denying truth to shape a story. But thanks to actual video footage, there is no denying the tragedy that occurred in Minneapolis, which means right now the truth is winning and it is crushing him because nothing is more paramount to Donald Trump than controlling the narrative. That's why he's replaced half of the press corps with bootlicking sycophants. It's why he shakes down news networks and practically owns one of them. It's why he has an entire right-wing media apparatus at his disposal willing to regurgitate whatever piece of propaganda is fed to them. Influencing public perception is so crucial to this man when he was kicked off of one social media service for spewing lies he just founded his own, which is doing just splendidly these days.

The point is for these people to be losing the narrative, it means they are losing popular support. And that doesn't mean we should declare victory, but it is a reason to be hopeful. Because for over a year, we've had to endure an administration that lies to our faces about their triumph over scandals that aren't real and who touts their wins with regard to non-existent successes, but people are finally seeing through their bullshit. What they are doing is shameful, un-American, and not to mention…

(cut to video)
Trump: Look, it got pretty boring.

(cut to studio)
BTC: I couldn't agree more.