Donald Trump’s sudden silence speaks volumes

| 3:00 pm EDT September 15, 2018
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So far today, Donald Trump has said… well, nothing. He’s posted no tweets. He’s said nothing in public. He hasn’t shown his face. His official schedule for the day has nothing on it. This is one of the most pivotal days of Trump’s failing presidency and collapsing life, and yet he’s decided to go AWOL. This actually tells us a lot.

The last thing we heard from Donald Trump was a late-night rant last night which saw him repeatedly doubling down on his lies about the Puerto Rico hurricane death toll, before taking one of his lamest cheap shots at President Obama to date. But then he disappeared from public view around midnight. He never did address the Americans who have now died in Hurricane Florence. He hasn’t even done a “thoughts and prayers” routine about it. After his Puerto Rico death tolls meltdown, it’s as if he can’t acknowledge that anyone could possibly be dying in this hurricane either, because it’s happening under his watch.

That is, of course, pathetic. But it’s not surprising. considering his lack of character. What does stand out here, however, is that he still has yet to have a customary meltdown about the Paul Manafort plea deal. In the past we’ve seen Trump alternately try to diminish the role that Manafort played in the campaign, and praise Manafort for not having flipped on him. Now that Manafort has indeed flipped on him – in what might be the most devastating of all the various plea deals that his own people have cut against him – Trump has gone tellingly silent.

Maybe Donald Trump was so taken aback by all of this, he’s still trying to figure out how to mount an appropriately inappropriate response. Maybe he’s in denial about the bodyblow he just suffered. Maybe this has all caused his fractured brain to finally and fully shatter, and he’s no longer capable of responding. In any case, we’re talking about a guy who never misses an opportunity to say something ridiculous or horrid at the most important of moments – yet now that everything is going over a cliff for him, he’s gone silent.