President Trump turned his Cabinet Room into a television studio on Thursday, May 28, 2026, and the broadcast produced a stunning admission that may haunt Republicans for months to come. During a meeting he opened up to the White House press corps, Trump bluntly declared that he doesn’t “care about the midterms” — a confession that one prominent cable host called unprecedented in American political history.
On Friday, May 29, Lawrence O’Donnell devoted a blistering monologue on “The Last Word” to dissecting what he framed as a historic moment of political self-sabotage. The MS NOW host argued that no occupant of the Oval Office has ever uttered such words — privately or otherwise — and that Trump chose to do so in front of cameras while his Cabinet looked on.
A Cabinet Meeting Turned Reality Show
O’Donnell argued that Cabinet meetings, traditionally treated as sensitive deliberative sessions, have been transformed under Trump into something resembling “the kind of cheap reality TV” the former “Apprentice” host built his celebrity brand around. Trump opened Thursday’s gathering by bragging about inviting reporters inside — a flourish O’Donnell described as emblematic of the spectacle that has replaced substantive governance.
The result, the host said, is that officials are prevented from “speaking freely to Donald Trump,” reduced instead to taking turns offering praise. Cameras captured exactly that pattern Thursday, with Cabinet members fawning over the president in a now-familiar ritual that has played out repeatedly over the past year.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was among the most effusive, praising Trump for what he called a “smart” war on Iran. The president responded by literally patting Hegseth on the back and laughingly stating, “He loves war.”
“The Cabinet room has never reeked of such stupidity and inhumanity before, and it never will again after the Trump presidency,” O’Donnell said.
The Iran War Looming Over Everything
Trump’s admission that he is indifferent to the midterms came in response to a question about his ongoing war on Iran and the ostensible negotiations meant to end it. “They thought they were going to outwait me, you know?” Trump said. “‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms.”
Now on the 88th day of what Trump has branded his “smart war,” the conflict has claimed at least 13 U.S. military service members and more than 3,000 Iranians, fueling fears of a global energy crisis and driving skyrocketing costs for gasoline and diesel fuel at home. Polling shared by O’Donnell indicated that 83 percent of voters say gas prices are going up, with not a single respondent saying prices are dropping significantly — except, the host noted dryly, Trump himself, who made that very claim during Thursday’s session.
O’Donnell also flagged that the president spent nearly nine minutes of the meeting expounding on his plans to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., a fixation that exists alongside his obsession with the controversial White House ballroom project.
Republicans Quietly Breaking Away
While Trump may have shrugged off the political calendar, his party is not. O’Donnell pointed out that Republican lawmakers in both chambers are increasingly distancing themselves from the president as the upcoming midterm elections approach — contests that even right-wing pundits expect to be disastrous for the GOP.
“Republicans in the Senate and in the House do care about the midterm elections, and they know Donald Trump is not helping them, and they know nothing is hurting them more than Donald Trump’s war in Iran and the inflation it has caused in this country, especially skyrocketing costs of gasoline and diesel fuel,” O’Donnell said.
Signs of GOP fractures have been multiplying. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has torched the Trump DOJ’s $1.776 billion fund as a “cop beaters’ slush fund,” and a majority of GOP voters now reportedly oppose it. In Texas, Ken Paxton defeated Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff, scrambling the map further. House Speaker Mike Johnson is reportedly struggling to hold his caucus together, and FBI Director Kash Patel has been forced to fire a far-right agent over a bigoted attack. In Florida, Representative Byron Donalds is grappling with MAGA infighting during his gubernatorial primary.
Democrats, meanwhile, are seizing the opening. Senator Cory Booker has hammered Trump-era ICE detention practices, former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is mounting a Senate bid focused on voters “hit hard” by Trump’s economy, and Texas State Representative James Talarico is running against what he calls the nation’s “most corrupt political system.” Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms recently captured the Democratic nomination for Georgia governor, and Representative Terri Sewell has been rallying voters against new GOP-led voting restrictions.
For O’Donnell, the through line was unmistakable: a president performing for the cameras while his own party scrambles to outrun the consequences of his choices. As reaction continued to spread Friday, fellow MS NOW personalities including Nicolle Wallace weighed in on the moment, while critics from Stephen Miller’s orbit to podcaster Joe Rogan have spent recent weeks dissecting Trump’s ever-more-theatrical style of governance.
