The White House session with agency and department heads was officially called so the beleaguered president to lay out his priorities and get government officials on the same page.
For Trump, the meeting comes at a critical point in his tenure. His administration has no major legislative accomplishments to speak of, despite having Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.
The top talker since Trump was sworn in has often been the inquiries into his campaign and Russia, thanks in no small part to the leaks coming from within the unpopular president's own government.
A report on Monday said Trump had given his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, a Cabinet member, until July 4 to turn things around. Priebus told him it's a 'blessing' in the meeting to be able to serve him and his agenda.
His attorney general was sucked back into the scandal last week after Comey reportedly told senators in a closed-door session that Sessions had a third undisclosed contact with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
Sessions canceled an appearance before a congressional committee to testify on the Department of Justice's budget Tuesday and said he would talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee about Russia, instead.
The Justice Department chief told the president in a televised introduction during today's Cabinet meeting that law enforcement in America remain 'very frustrated' but they're 'so thrilled' that the administration wants to support them in combating rising crime.
'And it's an honor to be able to serve you in that regard, and it sets the exact right message,' Sessions said.
Trump told him in response, 'Great success including MS-13. They're being thrown out in record numbers, and rapidly. And they're being depleted, and they'll all be gone pretty soon.'
As other Cabinet officials went around the table and boasted about their departments' work at the president's invitation, Trump's CIA director, Mike Pompeo, kept his remarks quick and to the point.
'I'm honored to serve as your CIA director. It's an incredible privilege to lead the men and women who provide the intelligence so that we can do the national security mission. And in the finest tradition of the CIA, I'm not going to say a damned thing in front of the media.'
Trump played to the press on his own behalf, telling his Cabinet while the cameras rolled that 'obstructionist' Democrats are withholding their votes from an Obamacare replacement bill because 'they think that's their best political game.'
'We've been doing very well, but they're obstructionist, and that's sad,' Trump said. 'We've been coming up with something that I will believe will be very good, with zero support from the obstructionist Democrats.'
A major indicator of the problems Trump has faced is the timing of the all-hands convening of his agency directors and executive branch heads.
He held the meeting nearly two months past the point that Obama did when he was a recently-inaugurated president. Obama was able to bring his full Cabinet together on April 20, 2009.
Trump's prolonged battle to get his Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer through the Senate delayed the meeting until after the president's five-nation foreign trip.
The White House and president have accused Democrats of derailing Cabinet-level confirmation processes, but they were not always the cause of the clog.
Multiple Trump picks did not have the requisite paperwork and financial disclosure forms turned in, and Trump waited to make his last cabinet appointment until two days before he took office.
One appointee, Andy Puzder, a fast food executive Trump had tapped to lead the Department of Labor, backed out just as he was supposed to testify, after allegations of spousal abuse of his ex-wife surfaced, and the president had to submit a new name to Congress.
The Senate gave Lighthizer, the last of Trump's 24-member cabinet, the green light a month ago on May 11.
He joked with Trump about it on Monday. 'Mr. President, first of all I want to apologize for being late for work. For four months I got bogged down in that swamp that you want to drain.'
Lighthizer has taken a lead role, along with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in working with the United States' neighbor to the north and south to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump is likely to talk about that effort, as well as his EPA administrator's campaign to extricate the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, as he holds court with his Cabinet today.
