The Cabinet of Horrors: Labor Day Edition

Trump’s ministers of flattery gather to rename holidays, rewrite history, and award him the Nobel Prize he’s already claimed in his head.

Donald Trump staged what he called a Cabinet meeting this week, though “meeting” suggests deliberation, policy, or perhaps even a sliver of governance. What actually unfolded was a two-hour coronation ceremony in which secretaries and advisers took turns praising the Dear Leader with all the subtlety of a North Korean propaganda reel. It was less Cabinet, more cult revival, complete with miracle tariffs, messianic self-congratulation, and one reporter interrupting to announce that Taylor Swift is engaged.

Trump opened the spectacle like a televangelist hawking prosperity gospel, except the prosperity was tariffs. “We’re bringing in trillions,” he declared. “Inflation is gone, groceries are down, energy is way down, and the auto plants are pouring into the United States like never before.” He added, “NATO, they’re paying five percent of GDP because of me. They never paid before me. They didn’t pay, they laughed at us. Now they’re paying.”

None of this is true. Inflation remains high, grocery and energy prices are climbing, and the U.S. auto industry has been slashing jobs rather than opening new plants. Far from filling the Treasury with “trillions,” Trump’s tariffs have functioned as a tax on American consumers, raising costs on imports while generating only a fraction of the revenue he boasts about. And NATO nations are not paying five percent of GDP toward defense, the longstanding target is two percent, and only a handful of allies even meet that. Trump’s “five percent” figure exists only in his imagination, like the auto plants supposedly sprouting across the Midwest or the tariff rebate checks he keeps promising to hand out like Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.

As proof that America is beating China in artificial intelligence, Trump waved around a glossy photo. “Mark Zuckerberg sent me this,” he said. “A data center the size of Manhattan. The size of Manhattan! And they tell me China doesn’t have anything like this. We are number one. Everyone said China would lead. Now we lead.” In the world of Trump, an emailed JPEG from Zuckerberg apparently counts as a national security triumph.

The Cabinet fell over itself to amplify the fantasy. One aide trumpeted that Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, casting him as “the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace award was ever talked about.” Then came Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative confirmed in February 2025, borrowing the gravitas of an AFL–CIO hall monitor. He confidently declared, “Labor Day should be Trump Trade Policy Day. Median weekly earnings fell under Biden, down 2.1 percent. Under you, Mr. President, they went up 3.3 percent. You flipped the script on trade.”

Greer’s numbers, however, don’t match anything found in actual government data. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median weekly earnings for full-time workers in Q1 2025 were about $1,194, nudging up to $1,206 in Q2 2025, a 1% increase, not the miraculous 3.3% he conjured out of thin air. Meanwhile, inflation rose about 2.4% year-over-year, meaning whatever gains workers did see were quietly swallowed by higher prices at the checkout line.

The Federal Reserve’s real wage data drives the point home: inflation-adjusted weekly earnings crept from 373 to 376 between Q1 and Q2, a measly 0.8% bump in purchasing power. Another analysis found they actually fell by $2 year-over-year. Hardly the kind of surge that justifies renaming Labor Day in Trump’s honor.

In reality, real wages ticked up under Biden as inflation cooled through 2023–24, while under Trump they’ve stagnated or slid thanks to his tariff-fueled price spikes. His “Labor Day miracle” is less about worker prosperity than higher costs, strained supply chains, and farmers squeezed by retaliatory tariffs. As for that Nobel Peace Prize? It remains as elusive as ever, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza aren’t exactly helpful résumé lines. The numbers Greer cited don’t exist outside the echo chamber of Trump’s Cabinet, where facts are optional, flattery is mandatory, and math is whatever Trump says it is.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s in-house deal whisperer, went even further: “Japan and Korea will never open their markets, but we made them invest $900 billion here. The EU, they’re paying us 15 percent. We pay zero. And Intel? Biden gave them $11 billion as a gift. You turned around and got 10 percent of their company for free. That’s capitalism, not socialism. Nobody else could have done it.”

Trump basked. “It’s true. They gave us 11 billion. I said, give us 10 percent. And we didn’t pay a dime. Nobody ever saw a deal like that before.”

The Secretary of Veterans Affairs gushed that Trump had given him a single sacred directive: “Go take care of my veterans.” He boasted that wait times are plummeting, backlogs have fallen by over 100,000 cases, and veterans are finally “getting the help they need.” Trump, never one to miss his cue, chimed in: “We have a 93 percent approval rating at the VA now. You know what it was before? Horrible. Absolutely horrible.”

Except that’s not what’s happening. Recent reporting shows that Trump’s budget cuts to the VA have hollowed out the system, leaving clinics scrambling to fill positions. Many physicians are refusing to take VA jobs altogether because of reduced pay scales and slashed benefits, a brain drain that undercuts the very care Trump claims is better than ever. Wait times are down only modestly, but not because of efficiency, they’re down because fewer veterans are even bothering to schedule appointments. And that “93 percent approval rating”? The actual VA trust score has hovered stubbornly around 78–81 percent for years, slipping this summer as staff shortages worsened.

So while the Cabinet clapped like trained seals, the truth is bleaker: fewer doctors willing to work at the VA, fewer services available to veterans, and a system running on fumes while Trump boasts about numbers that don’t exist outside his teleprompter.

At the Department of Transportation, the secretary claimed Labor Day on behalf of “the men and women who wear boots and make this country wonderful.” Under Trump, he bragged, they were finally free of diversity initiatives and environmental reviews. “We’ve got rid of the DEI, we’ve got rid of the green. Time is money. And by the way, windmills within 1.2 miles of a roadway are a safety risk, they mess up the automation in cars. We’re saying no more. It’s a safety risk.”

Trump, delighted, interrupted: “That’s great. That’s a great team effort. Windmills are a disaster. They kill your birds, they ruin your towns. Terrible.”

Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon chief mused about renaming the Department of Defense. “Mr. President, when I say Department of Defense, it doesn’t sound right. Maybe next time we’re here my card will read Department of War. Because George Washington didn’t start a Department of Defense. He started a Department of War to win wars. You are the peace president, sir, because you are strong.” Trump grinned: “I think I like Department of War better. We’ll see.”

Marco Rubio joined the chorus, calling Trump “the peacemaker-in-chief” who personally ended fighting between Cambodia and Thailand. “The president just picks up the phone and tells them to stop fighting, and within 72 hours the fighting stopped. There’s no other leader in the world who could have done it.” Then, without missing a beat, Rubio launched into his true passion: “I wasn’t going to bring it up, but I think I need to. People getting married on Saturdays during college football season is a scourge. It’s dividing families. Maybe an executive order is needed.” Trump nodded gravely.

The law-and-order segment of the show was equally absurd. Trump bragged that in just 12 days he had made Washington, D.C. one of the safest cities in America. “You won’t even need to carry a gun,” he said. “But if you do, I think you’d feel a hell of a lot better, right?” He promised that Chicago could be “solved in two months” if only Governor Pritzker would invite him in. “These are tough cookies we’ve got,” he said approvingly of the soldiers patrolling the capital. “They’re bad in a good sense.”

Foreign policy was a blur of tall tales. Trump claimed he stopped a nuclear war between India and Pakistan by threatening tariffs. “I told Modi and Pakistan: no trade deal if you keep fighting. Within five hours it was done.” He insisted Ukraine would never have been invaded if he were president, that Putin admitted as much, and that he alone could end the war through “a very strong tariff system.” Gaza, he explained, has been going on for “thousands of years,” but he would have it wrapped up “in two to three weeks.”

Somewhere in this fantasia, a reporter broke in: “Mr. President, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are engaged. The world wants your reaction.” Trump solemnly replied: “I wish them a lot of luck. He’s a great player. She’s terrific. I wish them a lot of luck.”

By the end, Trump was in full messiah mode. “This is the greatest Cabinet ever assembled,” he declared. “We are a very rich country again. Very rich. When we’re rich, we can take care of the poor. And we are respected at the highest level. Respected like never before.” He floated the idea of tariff rebate checks, “a dividend to the American people”, as though international trade were his personal slot machine, rigged to spit out cash.

And with that, the Cabinet of Horrors adjourned, having rebranded Labor Day as Trump Day, foreign policy as fairy tale, and sycophancy as a governing philosophy. The only question left is whether the Nobel Committee will act quickly enough to honor the man who can solve thousand-year wars with a phone call and end wedding season on college football Saturdays with the stroke of a pen.