The Arms Race to Kiss Trump’s Ass Has Never Been More Ridiculous
I do not wish to leave out an important branch of this subject, for it is a danger from which princes are with difficulty preserved, unless they are very careful and discriminating. It is that of flatterers, of whom courts are full, because men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and in a way so deceived in them, that they are preserved with difficulty from this pest.
—Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532
A Trumpworld figure isn’t judged
On how he carries out some duty.
It’s more about the kisses he
Can plant on Donald Trump’s patootie.—Calvin Trillin, The Nation, May 2025
Like the “gilded rococo hellscape” of President Donald Trump’s redesigned Oval Office, the rhetoric that Cabinet officials and foreign leaders deploy to flatter Trump, now in his second term, has ascended to a level of self-parody so exalted that we must ask whether the escalation can long continue. If these blandishments scale greater heights, will Trump finally detect the winking contempt they communicate to the rest of humanity? Can flattery become too crude, or too extreme, to gratify its recipient? On this last question we’re all witnessing, in real time, a natural experiment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
A July 8 Cabinet photo op was, like its predecessors, a North Korea–style exercise in competitive groveling:
“I want to thank you for your leadership,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Trump. “Several times, the day after the Texas flooding, you and Melania were on the phone with me, and I want to thank you for that.” (Reality check: Spurious new cost controls enacted by the administration delayed FEMA deployment by 72 hours.)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that at the recent NATO meeting, he witnessed “how the world responds to us saying it’s time for you to shoulder the burden and take the lead for your continent. It only happens with President Trump leading.” (Reality check: NATO, which recently pledged to increase defense spending by 3.5 percent of gross domestic product over 10 years, has yet to meet its previous 10-year goal of 2 percent.)
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum: “The fact that you’ve endorsed and supported a policy of energy dominance, that sends a signal to the market that we’re going to have more supply. You talked during the campaign about inflation being a country-buster. You’ve broken the back of inflation in six months, among all the other things you’ve accomplished.” (Reality check: The consumer price index wasn’t notably high when Trump entered office.)
