Donald Trump’s Absentee Presidency
The New York billionaire seems unable to comfort the nation in times of tragedy or celebrate its moments of triumph.
It is a poignant paradox of Donald Trump’s ubiquitous presidency—all tweets, all the time—that a leader who prides himself as omnipresent in digital public discourse is so often absent from national life in the 100 human ways in which the country has come to expect its presidents to perform.
Latest case in point: After Hurricane Michael devastated parts of the Florida Panhandle, Trump played host at the White House to Kanye West, who—in a 10-minute monologue in the Oval Office—dropped the F bomb and praised Trump’s “Make American Great Again” cap as a hypermasculine talisman that made him feel “like a guy that could play catch with his son.”
But think about it: Have we ever seen
