Donald Trump has been stunned into silence
It’s been several hours since the House voted to formally condemn Donald Trump for being a racist. That tally included every Democrat, four Republicans, and one Independent. Trump has been left with any number of avenues for focusing his anger and his explosive retaliation. So who’s he decided to target?
Interestingly enough, no one. Thus far Donald Trump hasn’t fired back at anyone. Not Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who ended up leading the charge today. Not Eric Swalwell or John Lewis, who took the reins after GOP House leaders tried to silence Pelosi. Not the four House Republicans who voted that Trump is a racist. Not Justin Amash, who left the GOP over Trump, and who also voted today that Trump is a racist. Trump hasn’t mustered up the nerve, the resolve, or perhaps the coherence, to attack any of them.
That’ll change eventually. Perhaps before the night is over, and certainly by tomorrow morning, Trump will be firing off one increasingly unhinged and distressingly erratic tweet after another [Update: it happened just minutes after we published this article]. He’ll insist he’s not a racist, while ramping up his racist rhetoric. He’ll claim that anyone who hates him also hates America. He’ll go indiscriminately berserk.
But for now, Donald Trump doesn’t have a single thing to say. His Twitter output this evening consists of a lone racist retweet from Republican Senator Steve Daines, and nothing more. The House of Representatives just formally declared that the President of the United States is a racist, and thus far he hasn’t been able to come up with a single word in response. Trump has been stunned into silence.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report