President Donald Trump’s lack of public appearances since the government shutdown began early Wednesday morning has spurred one Democratic leader to say Trump is in the “witness protection program.”
Apart from Truth Social posts and a softball television interview on Wednesday, the president has largely stayed out of the public eye, with no apparent signs of the shutdown—the third under a Trump administration—being resolved.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a target of Trump’s AI-generated Truth Social posts, told MSNBC that the president is in hiding because he “knows he’s responsible” for the shutdown.
When asked on Morning Joe about Trump’s posts and about meeting with him in the Oval Office hours before the shutdown began, Jeffries said it’s “further confirmation that Republicans are the ones who were clearly determined to shut the government down.”
“Everything that President Trump has done after Monday has been unhinged and unserious. In fact, Donald Trump is in the presidential witness protection program,” Jeffries said of the felonious president.
“No one can find him when it comes to the government shutdown issue because he knows he’s responsible for having caused it,” the New York lawmaker added. “And the behavior—the erratic behavior that we’ve seen—is further confirmation of that unfortunate fact.”
The White House disputed that characterization, calling it “ridiculous fodder.”
“The president is literally working around the clock right now,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, misusing the word “literally.”
“I think he has a swearing-in ceremony, or he already did,” she said. “He has several meetings on the books today. He literally works 24/7. Anyone who works in this place or covers this place, as you all do, knows that to be true. And Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democrats should get back to work in a few minutes and vote to reopen the government.”
One public photo that has emerged of Trump since Tuesday night was of his arrival on Thursday—with the first lady—at the Naval Observatory for dinner with the Vances.
Earlier that day, Trump met with Office of Management and Budget Director and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to decide “which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM,” he wants to eliminate—despite having claimed during the 2024 campaign that Project 2025 was “seriously extreme” and “absolutely ridiculous.”
