With this in mind, it’s easy to imagine Donald Trump reacting to the ruling with delight, not just because of his record of radical animus, but also because the Republican-appointed justices just delivered a ruling that will almost certainly benefit the president’s party.

And yet, when a reporter asked Trump about the high court’s decision several hours after its release, he appeared to have absolutely no idea what had happened.

Q: In light of the SCOTUS ruling on the Voting Rights Act, do you want Republican states to look at redrawing congressional districts before the midterms?

TRUMP: When did it come out? I've been with contractors because we're trying to get the ballroom built ahead of schedule. Tell me what happened

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-04-29T18:21:49.982Z

,,,,A similar exchange unfolded a week earlier, when a reporter asked whether the president could confirm recent reporting about his administration taking steps to send 1,100 Afghans to the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I don’t know,” he replied.

The week before that, amid reports that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had met with administration officials for an important closed-door discussion, a reporter asked Trump whether Anthropic did, in fact, have a meeting at the White House.....

Most objective observers would probably agree that if Joe Biden had repeatedly said “I don’t know” in response to simple questions about his own administration, it would have been front-page news — and the Democrat’s responses would have played on a loop for hours on end in conservative media.

Similarly, Trump has personally invested considerable time and energy in accusing Biden of having been a doddering old “autopen” president who was unaware of events unfolding around him. Given the frequency with which President Bystander clings to “I don’t know” responses, he should probably consider a new line of attack....

It makes Trump’s apparent cluelessness that much more alarming. As The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie noted in a column late last year, “There is a presidency at work in Washington, but it is not clear that there is a president at work in the Oval Office.”