WASHINGTON—Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle that there is a feeling of “unanimity” during cabinet meetings with President Donald Trump and other top deputies in the administration.
Rollins joined Boyle for Breitbart News’s live-streamed policy event in partnership with CGCN and the ALFA Institute. This is Breitbart News’s latest policy event with a cabinet official, following Boyle’s conversation with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in March.
As the conversation drew to a close, Boyle asked Rollins for her perspective on being inside one of the cabinet meetings.
“There’s just so much joy in being able to do this work and to be in those cabinet meetings. I think we’ve had five in a matter of a couple of months,” Rollins said, noting she thinks she is the lone cabinet member who was part of the president’s senior staff in the first administration.
“So I’ve sort of lived it from the last administration to the four years and the great pause, and some pretty dark days during that pause to today, and you can feel the weight of the world is literally on our shoulders in many respects, but also the joy in being able to, again, meet this moment at this time with this president with a vision to recast the future of our country,” she explained.
Rollins emphasized that this administration’s vision to restore American greatness is about the decades and centuries to come, not merely the rest of Trump’s term.
“And it isn’t just about the next four years. It’s about the next 250 years. As we circle back to our 250th birthday, what do we want America to look like in 250 years?” Rollins said.
Rollins said she knew some of her colleagues and fellow secretaries whom she has known for an extended time, and others with whom she has forged recent friendships, registering the weight of the calling that materializes in the Cabinet room.
“So you walk in the Cabinet Room with all of your, you know, some of my old friends are in there that I’ve known for a really long time, like Scott Turner and Linda McMahon and Doug Collins and Lee Zeldin, but also some of my new friends, like Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard and others that I didn’t know as well,” she said. “And you just feel the weight of the moment, but also the fulfillment in understanding what you’re being called to do, and knowing that you have the team next to you to do it.”
And while, with great transparency, the press is often invited into the cabinet meetings to film them for the world to see, Rollins shared one moment that occurred after the press had departed the room following the last meeting, giving an insight into the president’s confidence in his team.
“The press left, and the doors closed, and he said, ‘You know, I’m always trying to figure out who’s doing the best job,’” she recalled. “And this is very vintage Donald Trump…and, you know, it’s always a competition, right? He said, ‘But my goodness…after hearing every one of you go around and talk about what you’re doing and how you’re transforming your agencies and implementing the America first vision… I’m just so proud of everyone, and I’m so grateful to all of you.’”
“And you can feel it. You can just feel that unanimity. You can feel the dynamic — all hands on deck work; the all gas, no brakes… You feel that you’re able to help save a country at a time when it desperately needed it,” she concluded.
