Donald Trump Reportedly Included These Controversial People In Oval Office Staff Meetings

Donald Trump is someone who took his popularity and his poll ratings while he was in the White House very seriously. After all, the former president did make a point to repeat that his inauguration crowd was supposedly much bigger than the crowd that Barack Obama saw back in 2008. "I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people," he said, according to Vox.

A poll also suggested that poll numbers are actually very favorable to him. He told Fox Business that this is helping him to make his decision on whether or not he wants to run for office again in 2024. He said, "I think if I run, I'll get it. So if I decide to run, I'll get it very easily. Most people have said that if I run, they won't run against me."

With that said, it seems like Trump also pays attention to the opinions of those people that he likes to keep close around him. And that's not just his wife Melania Trump, his family members, or his most senior advisors. Apparently, also included a lot of outsiders during his Oval Office staff meetings, much to the surprise of both his fans and his critics.

According to Slate, while many Fox News hosts and television personalities aren't the kind of people you'd expect on the White House payroll, it sure seemed like it during Donald Trump's presidency. Apparently, people like Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and even Judge Jeanine Pirro were called the "cable cabinet" of Trump's White House.

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham even said, "There were times the president would come down the next morning and say, 'Well, Sean thinks we should do this,' or, 'Judge Jeanine thinks we should do this.'" That shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone it was revealed that both Hannity and Laura Ingraham both texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the January 6 insurrection to get Trump to make a statement or at least say something to quell the violence that day, per The Washington Post. 

But then again, Trump's relationship with Fox News stars such as Hannity is no secret, as detailed by The New York Times. That, and Hannity even bought a home close to Trump in Palm Beach. And while there have been reports of Trump supposedly breaking up with Fox over "election fraud falsehoods," according to the Los Angeles Times, the Trump family's love connection to Fox is rather deep. Trump's son Donald Trump, Jr. is even engaged to former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle. Talk about a modern news network love story, right?