Trump was seemingly the last to hear about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death

trump speaks about supreme court
(Image credit: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

When news broke that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died Friday after battling pancreatic cancer, tributes from politicians and Americans all over the country came pouring in within minutes.

One voice conspicuously missing? President Trump's.

Trump was speaking at a rally in Minnesota when the Supreme Court announced Ginsburg's death. And while he certainly can't be blamed for failing to check Twitter while giving one of his signature rambling speeches, as the hour wore on, it became increasingly strange that the president was seemingly one of the few top lawmakers who hadn't heard the major update.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

As NBC News' Garrett Haake put it, the "political earth has shifted under his feet" during the course of his rally, and he was seemingly without a clue.

See more

Ginsburg's death constitutes "political earth," of course, because with a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Trump and the Republican-majority Senate are now likely to push forward with a conservative nominee to replace her before the November presidential election. With a new Trump-picked justice, the court's conservative majority would be further solidified for years to come.

Trump told the crowd about his belief that Sean Hannity should win a Pulitzer Prize, called Joe Biden "Sleepy Joe," and discussed the latest poll numbers, all while pundits and Americans everywhere were meanwhile considering the sudden change to the 2020 race. When he started ruminating on the power of the president to influence decades of judicial balance on the Supreme Court, attendees began yelling "Ginsburg is dead," video shows.

See more

At last, after Trump exited the stage nearly two hours after the court's announcement, reporters seemingly informed Trump of Ginsburg's passing. "She just died? Wow. I didn't know that," he responded. He said he was "sad to hear" the news and praised her as an "amazing woman." Summer Meza

See more

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Summer Meza

Summer is news editor at TheWeek.com, and has previously written for Newsweek and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School and Santa Clara University, she now lives in New York with two cats.