It’s almost going to be one of those historical questions that people ask their parents and friends later on in life, like where they were when they found out JFK was assassinated or when the Challenger blew up or when 9/11 hit: “Where were you when you found out that Donald Trump was unequivocally guilty of paying off mistresses in order to win the election?”
We now know where Donald Trump was when he heard the news that his former personal attorney had “flipped” on him in court — he was aboard Air Force One on his way to a rally in West Virginia, where he planned to tear down the Democratic nominee for the Senate and campaign for the Republican.
He finds himself on a lot of those plane rides lately, and at a lot of those rallies. Usually, when the President returns from a campaign stop like the one he held in WV on Tuesday night, he is ebullient. He can’t stop talking about his supporters and how much they loved him, repeating story after story from his rehearsed lines and even recounting things that he came up with on the spot — Trump is quite proud of his impromptu ability to compose a story.
Tuesday was quite different, for some reason.
And according to the Wall Street Journal, he wasn’t just less enthusiastic after the event:
He learned of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea and Mr. Manafort’s conviction aboard Air Force One on his way to a campaign rally in West Virginia Tuesday and returned to the White House that evening in a ‘rotten’ mood, further irritated by what he felt had been a flat audience, according to people close to the White House. His frustrations were amplified by the fact that his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is golfing in Scotland this week, people close to the president said.”
That’s right: Trump was mad at his supporters for not being more excited. On the day everyone found out for sure he was a criminal. Even to those supporters who just don’t care what the President does wrong, it has to feel like a letdown that their votes for him in 2020 — if he makes it to 2020 — will be largely irrelevant.
And mad at Rudy for golfing? It is almost guaranteed that Mr. Giuliani is at Turnberry, Trump’s own course in southern Scotland. How could he be mad that his lawyer is dropping money at one of his properties?
Maybe he gave Rudy an executive discount.
Featured image via screen capture