Spicer: Tweets are Trump's official statements
We asked strangers to pronounce covfefe
Franken: Covfefe means 'I gotta go to bed now'
Trump: Twitter lets me bypass the media
NORTH CHARLESTON, SC - FEBRUARY 17: U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a crowd during the debut event for the Dreamliner 787-10 at Boeing's South Carolina facilities
on February 17, 2017 in North Charleston, South Carolina. The airplane begins flight testing later this year and will be delivered to airline customers starting in 2018. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
Trump: I won't attend correspondents' dinner
Tapper: Trump's tweets a window into his soul
Donald Trump tweets about Australian PM call
Trump promoting Fox News in tweets and interviews _00030214.jpg
Trump promoting Fox News in tweets and talks
Spicer: Tweets are Trump's official statements
kth trump tweet london mayor twitter use ac_00001507
How much weight do Trump's tweets carry?
WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus Executive Committee in the Cabinet Room at the White House March 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump asked African Americans to support him, saying, "You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed -- what the hell do you have to lose?" (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump voters to President: Stop Twitter rants
MELBOURNE, FL - FEBRUARY 18: President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the AeroMod International hangar at Orlando Melbourne International Airport on February 18, 2017 in Melbourne, Florida. President Trump is holding his rally as he continues to try to push his agenda through in Washington, DC. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Trump tweets clarification of Sweden remarks
US President Donald Trump speaks following a tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, February 21, 2017.
Trump blasts FBI 'leakers' in morning tweets
Anderson Cooper reads best 'covfefe' tweets
Trump day Twitter orig vstan dlewis_00000000.jpg
WH: Trump 'covfefe' tweet clear to small group
Trump day Twitter orig vstan dlewis_00000000.jpg
President Trump's 'covfefe' moment
Clinton jokes 'covfefe' was Russian message
try pronouncing defining covfefe roth jc nccorig_00000607.jpg
We asked strangers to pronounce covfefe
Franken: Covfefe means 'I gotta go to bed now'
Trump: Twitter lets me bypass the media
NORTH CHARLESTON, SC - FEBRUARY 17: U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a crowd during the debut event for the Dreamliner 787-10 at Boeing's South Carolina facilities on February 17, 2017 in North Charleston, South Carolina. The airplane begins flight testing later this year and will be delivered to airline customers starting in 2018.
Trump: I won't attend correspondents' dinner
Tapper: Trump's tweets a window into his soul
Donald Trump tweets about Australian PM call
Trump promoting Fox News in tweets and interviews _00030214.jpg
Trump promoting Fox News in tweets and talks
Spicer: Tweets are Trump's official statements
kth trump tweet london mayor twitter use ac_00001507
How much weight do Trump's tweets carry?
WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus Executive Committee in the Cabinet Room at the White House March 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump asked African Americans to support him, saying, "You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed -- what the hell do you have to lose?" (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump voters to President: Stop Twitter rants
MELBOURNE, FL - FEBRUARY 18: President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the AeroMod International hangar at Orlando Melbourne International Airport on February 18, 2017 in Melbourne, Florida. President Trump is holding his rally as he continues to try to push his agenda through in Washington, DC. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Trump tweets clarification of Sweden remarks
US President Donald Trump speaks following a tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, February 21, 2017.
Trump blasts FBI 'leakers' in morning tweets
Anderson Cooper reads best 'covfefe' tweets
Trump day Twitter orig vstan dlewis_00000000.jpg
WH: Trump 'covfefe' tweet clear to small group
Trump day Twitter orig vstan dlewis_00000000.jpg
President Trump's 'covfefe' moment
(CNN)Donald Trump is a big fan of Twitter. He sees it as a direct pipeline to supporters, an end run on the so-called "fake news" media. Which makes any extended period of time without a tweet from the President worth noting. And we are in the midst of such a drought right now.
The last time Trump sent out a tweet was 8:17 a.m. on Wednesday. It said this: "Getting ready to leave for Cincinnati, in the GREAT STATE of OHIO, to meet with ObamaCare victims and talk Healthcare & also Infrastructure!"
Between that moment and the time of this posting, roughly 37 hours have passed. That, according to calculations made by the one and only Philip Bump of the Washington Post, is the fifth-longest Twitter outage for Trump since he announced his candidacy in June 2015. To pass the fourth longest drought, Trump will need to stay away from Twitter for 2,312 minutes -- 38 total hours, or until 10:17 p.m. Thursday -- which looks doable. To break his all-time longest tweet drought, according to Bump, Trump would need to not tweet until 6:14 a.m. tomorrow.
What's fascinating about the past droughts is that they almost always have corresponded with slow news moments. Trump's longest break from Twitter, for example, came over the 2016 Thanksgiving Day weekend -- soon after he had been elected. The second longest was earlier that same month, the weekend after the election when Trump was, almost certainly, worn down from the just-concluded campaign.
This last 37 hours is not at all like those past Trump Twitter deserts. The last day and a half has seen not only the release of former FBI Director James Comey's written testimony Wednesday documenting his relationship with the President but also Comey's hugely high-profile testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
If ever there was a time when you might expect Trump to take phone in hand and offer his own counter-narrative, this past 37 hours was it. And yet, nothing.
Theories abound to explain it.
The most common one is that someone took Trump's phone away, ensuring that he simply lacked the ability to tweet. I doubt it. He's the President of the United States. He's made clear -- in the face of much criticism -- that he isn't going to stop tweeting. I'm not sure anyone is in a position to simply tell the President to stop doing something and have him actually listen.
Then there's the argument that Trump's silence suggests he has now finally been made aware of the political -- and legal -- peril he is in, and that by tweeting he makes things worse, not better. Again, count me skeptical because Trump has never shied away from tweeting amid dicey legal and political circumstances before. (Remember that he called the Russia investigation the "single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history! " in the immediate aftermath of Bob Mueller's appointment as special counsel.)
Or maybe Trump's staff, as they had hoped to do, successfully distracted the President over these past 37 hours -- keeping him from thinking too much, and therefore tweeting too much about the situation. But how is that even possible given that we know Trump is an absolutely avid news consumer and there has been so much (and so much bad) Trump news over that period of time?
The short answer is we don't know why Trump hasn't tweeted since 8:17 a.m. Wednesday. But with every passing minute of Trump Twitter silence, he edges closer to his own personal best (worst?).
One other thing we know: Silence isn't Trump's natural state. So when the drought breaks -- and it will break -- look out.
No comments:
Post a Comment