Donald Trump’s sudden deafening silence
When Donald Trump abruptly pulled out of an upcoming campaign event in Arizona, pundits were quick to assume that it was because of the recent scandal involving Kari Lake and the Arizona GOP Chair. But that made little sense. Trump’s ally Lake got her way, and the AZ GOP Chair resigned. If anything, a Republican event in Arizona would be even more Trump-friendly now.
To me it felt like there was a much more likely and obvious reason that Trump’s people pulled the plug on his public appearance. Trump spent last weekend and the first half of this week regularly appearing in public, and each time he did, he created new soundbites about his senility. It reached a point that all the media talked about was Trump’s senility. Even Fox News felt compelled to briefly touch on the fact that Trump is confused and doesn’t know what’s going on.
But now that Trump has been briefly forced off the campaign trail by his E. Jean Carroll trial, suddenly he’s not speaking in public anymore. And after a day and a half of Trump not saying new senile things, the media frenzy about his senility has died down. After all, there’s only so many times the media can replay Trump’s senile moments from earlier in the week – and now he’s not supplying them with new material, because he’s not on the stage.
In that sense, Trump is almost being saved by the fact that he’s been pulled into this trial. Not really, but you know what I mean. The trial has shut him up for a bit, and it’s thus caused the media stories about Trump’s senility to dry up – at least until the next time he appears in public.
Trump’s next public appearance, and thus the next round of new senile soundbites for the media to chew on, would have happened tomorrow at this Arizona event. But because Trump isn’t attending, there won’t be any senile Trump soundbites tomorrow. It sure feels like Trump’s handlers used the recent Kari Lake scandal as an arbitrary excuse to cancel Trump’s speech at the event, in order to buy more time for the “Trump is senile” narrative to die down. If Trump doesn’t end up appearing in public for the rest of the week, and doesn’t hit the trail again until next week, perhaps the media will have moved on from Trump’s senility by then.
That’s unlikely, of course. Once Trump gets back out there and starts saying more senile things, whether it’s tomorrow or a month from now, the media is going to pounce on it because it’s become a ratings-friendly narrative. But if you’re Trump’s handlers and you’re trying to stop the bleeding, finding an excuse to clear his public schedule for the rest of the week would be an obvious move.
All you really have to do is look at how quickly the media has gone silent about Trump’s senility, now that Trump has gone a couple days without speaking. It shows what a clear advantage there is for Trump if his people can get him to shut up for a minute – and how much uglier things are for him when he is out there flailing in public.
