President Trump on Tuesday set a record for his longest televised appearance by presiding over a three-hour-and-17-minute Cabinet meeting at the White House.
The lengthy gabfest, which featured each Cabinet official delivering remarks about Labor Day and answering questions from the media, was Mr. Trump’s longest on-camera appearance, according to Roll Call’s database.
There are no records tracking the longest Cabinet meeting in U.S. history. At one point during Mr. Trump’s marathon session, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy complimented the media members who were holding boom mics at arm’s length for hours while standing next to the long conference table to record the discussions.
At the end, Mr. Trump said a Cabinet meeting with so many officials giving presentations in front of the cameras and taking questions was unprecedented.
“These people [Cabinet members] are very busy. This has never been done before,” Mr. Trump said, heaping praise on his team. “A Cabinet meeting was sacred — you’d never let the ’fake news’ media in. But the fake news media isn’t all fake. I think it’s a great thing. You really get the word out.”
Mr. Trump said of the unprecedented media access, “There’s something really nice about what we’re doing. It’s government. It’s an open government — that’s what we are.”
He also mocked the lack of questions and lack of transparency during President Biden’s Cabinet meetings.
“You [journalists] sat and asked one question to Biden and it was always the ice cream question — ’What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?’ ’uh…vanilla,’” the president said, imitating both the press and Mr. Biden.
Mr. Biden answered a total of five press questions over the course of nine Cabinet meetings during his term, according to data compiled by The Washington Times.
Mr. Biden spoke during the public portion of all his Cabinet meetings for a total of 45 minutes, or five minutes per meeting. He never spoke for longer than seven minutes during any of the public portions of Cabinet meetings while in office.
Mr. Trump has also held Cabinet meetings at a more frequent clip than his predecessor. He held his first meeting on Feb. 26, nearly one month after returning to the White House, and has participated in one every month since. Mr. Trump held 25 Cabinet meetings during his first term.
Mr. Biden held his first Cabinet meeting on April 10, 2021, and did not host his second until July of that year.
The longest Cabinet meeting ever recorded in world history was a three-day marathon in 1982 West Germany to settle a budget crisis under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. A 10-hour powwow with the Cabinet of Egyptian President Essam Sharaf occurred in 2011, shattering Mr. Sharaf’s previous record of six and a half hours.
