Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum offered fawning praise for President Donald Trump during an appearance on Fox Business Tuesday, giving him credit for getting Middle Eastern leaders on the phone “on a holiday weekend” — Memorial Day, which is recognized in the United States and not in any of the other countries involved.

Burgum chatted with Maria Bartiromo Tuesday morning about the economic impact of the Iran War, among other topics.

The U.S. strikes against Iran have been controversial from the beginning, and the Trump administration has received scathing criticism from the right as well as the left as the war has continued. The massive cost of the war — $29 billion and counting — and the inflationary impact on gas prices have been major points of contention. Bartiromo pointed out that the gas prices have started to ease as ceasefire talks continue, but they are still higher than before the war began.

Bartiromo introduced Burgum by commenting that he had “been doing a lot to keep up with all this demand” for oil, “whether it be from the war in Iran or from the massive demand on data centers.”

“What do you think the impact is on energy this morning, as you watch oil prices come down today?” she asked.

“Obviously, President Trump’s two moves ahead of his critics as always, nothing short of aspiration for peace in the Middle East. replied Burgum. “I mean, who on a Saturday afternoon over a holiday weekend can pull together all the world leaders from the Gulf State allies but also Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey — get ’em all in a phone call, and paint a vision, which again, is peace and prosperity in the Middle East, which some people thought never could be achieved. But he’s put all the conditions in place for this to come together, and this is gonna be great for not just for the United States but for the world economy and for peace and prosperity around the world.”

Memorial Day in the United States is a designated federal holiday to remember and mourn military personnel who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces. The holiday has its roots in post-Civil War “Decoration Days” that honored soldiers who had died during the conflict and was expanded to recognize all military members who died in service after the two world wars. In 1968, an act of Congress set the date as the last Monday in May, and then in 1971, the name was officially established as “Memorial Day.”

Many other countries have their own Memorial Day-type observances, with a variety of names and dates, to honor their own military dead.

Burgum’s comments were par for the course among Trump’s Cabinet members. A report by The New York Times Tuesday found that at least one out of every six sentences uttered during Cabinet meetings by the president’s appointees was to praise the boss.

Compared to Trump’s first term, in which Cabinet officials sometimes disagreed with the president, the Trump 2.0 Cabinet is in the habit of repeating his own idiosyncratic rhetoric back to him, giving him credit with any successes gained by their departments — sometimes even claiming that “only Trump” could have accomplished these results — and even echoing his attacks on former President Joe Biden and other political foes.

Watch the clip above via Fox Business.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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