Now we know why Donald Trump went so bonkers this weekend
Like the world’s worst poker player, Donald Trump has a “tell” when he knows bad news is about to surface about him: he begins posting a rapid series of more-ridiculous-than-usual tweets on various absurd topics. When something really bad is about to surface, he has an even bigger tell: he goes to Camp David to hunker down with his advisers. Over the weekend, Trump did both these things. Now we know why.
It’s not as if it was a big mystery. At some point over the weekend, Donald Trump decided he suddenly needed to distance himself from Paul Manafort. This stood out like a sore thumb, considering that Manafort hasn’t even been in the headlines lately. Why bring up Manafort? Why not try to distance himself from Roger Stone, who’s about to be arrested, or Michael Cohen, whose name is in the headlines every few minutes? Clearly, Trump knew that something ugly about Manafort was going to imminently surface.
Trump made this so obvious that on Monday morning, Palmer Report wrote a headline asking, “Is today the day for Paul Manafort?” Sure enough, hours later, we had our answer: Manafort has been caught witness tampering. Even we didn’t see this coming. We still want to know how Donald Trump could have known that Robert Mueller was about to post this court filing, as there are various possible explanations. But the bottom line is that now we know why Trump went so bonkers this weekend. He also gave away something even bigger.
Donald Trump’s entire pseudo-presidency has consisted of one piece of bad news about his scandals after another. But while he often tries to create distractions when he knows something is coming, he went much further this time around. He huddled with most of his family for the weekend, trying to figure out how to deal with it. He specifically tried to distance himself from Manafort just before the news dropped. Trump clearly thinks this story is far worse for him than the average bombshell. Why? We’ll see.
