Donald Trump’s strange silence
After Donald Trump received devastating news about Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen on Tuesday, Palmer Report pointed out that his response that day and the following day was tepid at best. The biggest insult he could come up with against Cohen was that no one should hire him as a lawyer, and his insistence that eight guilty verdicts against Manafort equaled “witch hunt” was met with chuckles. Now today he’s gone strangely silent.
To be clear, there have been a few tweets posted to his account today. But they’ve all been video clips, endorsements, and a formal statement about a hurricane, and Trump isn’t the one who writes or posts any of that. The only thing he’s “said” today was in his Fox News interview this morning, which Fox revealed that he pre-taped yesterday. Apart from that, his Twitter account has been surprisingly empty today. No traditional 6am meltdown. No attempt at making up for it in the afternoon, which he typically does when he occasionally skips the morning rant. So what’s going on here?
On some level it’s possible that Donald Trump thinks his Fox News interview speaks for itself. But usually, when he thinks he’s scored a win with an interview or a development that he expects will be viewed positively, he spends the rest of the day trying to drive the point home and gloating about it on Twitter. Perhaps he’s figured out that the interview was a bust, after observers on all sides pointed out that he unwittingly confessed to a felony during the interview. Or maybe he’s just out of gas. There’s one other thing to consider.
At 1:10am eastern time today, Donald Trump’s Twitter account lit up with this screaming nonsense: “NO COLLUSION – RIGGED WITCH HUNT!” This is the only real chest beating he’s done since he got hit by the Manafort-Cohen one two punch. Did he wake up in the middle of the night in an adrenaline surge and post this, before reverting back to his weary and defeated self and passing out? We’re almost left to wonder if that tweet even came from Trump, or if his staff posted it to try to create the appearance that he’s still fighting.
