Kathrine Frich
The president’s official calendar has been cleared.
When a political storm rolls into Washington, the brightest spotlights usually stay switched on until dawn.
Cameras wait on the lawn and reporters refresh their feeds every few seconds for a sign of life from the top.
Sometimes, though, the loudest reaction in the room is a sudden, heavy silence.
Three hours of silence
President Donald Trump practically vanished from public view as Tuesday’s midterm election results started turning against the Republican Party.
According to the Irish Star, the president spent the evening tucked away at a private reception inside the East Room of the White House. After firing off regular updates earlier in the day, his social media feed suddenly went dead for three straight hours as key battles slipped away.
When he finally resurfaced on Truth Social, he pointed straight to his own absence from the voting slips. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP” he wrote.
Behind the scenes, staffers rushed to shield their boss from the fallout while he stayed out of sight.
“President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves,” a White House official told CNN. The same source insisted to CNN that “President Trump was not on the ballot, and it’s proven that Trump voters show up when he is on the ballot.”
No public events
That retreat behind closed doors looks set to continue into Wednesday.
According to the Irish Star, the president’s official calendar has been cleared of any public appearances as the dust settles. Instead, his morning is blocked out for unstructured “Executive Time,” followed by a closed-door “Policy Meeting” running from 11:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
While the president stays off camera, Democrats are closing in on control of the House of Representatives and threatening the Senate majority.
In reports first broken by NBC and cited by the Irish Star, White House aides admitted Trump was beginning to accept that Tuesday “might be a really bad night” for Republicans.
Across the map, the Irish Star noted that Democrats Roy Cooper, Jon Ossoff, and Chris Pappas all secured major victories while GOP incumbents fell behind in battlegrounds like Texas and Michigan.
Even from the shadows of the East Room, Trump is already planning how to fight back against a hostile Congress.
During a Tuesday night phone call with CBS, the president gave himself a new nickname, calling himself “Mr. Veto” and warning that he can still block Democratic legislation from his desk.
