The Hole Where Donald Trump Was

A former president who once shared every trivial peeve, any unformed thought, is suddenly sharing nothing at all. That can be pretty disorienting for anyone who’s sunk mental energy into the man now living in silent exile. A loose collection of consultants, fact-checkers, academics, and voters who couldn’t look away for professional or personal reasons is now acclimating to the new, Trumpless reality. They’re going for long walks and sleeping through the night. They can look at their phone without dreading that he may have shattered an alliance or provoked a war.

“I feel I’ve been released from a hostage situation,” Sheri Berman, a political-science professor at Barnard College who studies democracies and about Donald Trump, told me. rather than Donald Trump.”