A gunman shot at the CDC, killing an officer. Trump hasn’t said a word.

Things President Donald Trump talked about publicly this week: Sylvester Stallone’s body, the $200 million ballroom he wants to build at the White House, receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, not receiving a Kennedy Center lifetime achievement award and taking over the police force in the nation’s capital.

Something Trump hasn’t talked about: a gunman, upset by coronavirus vaccines, who on Aug. 8 killed a police officer while firing hundreds of bullets at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trump often speaks off the cuff, following tangents about everything from casting decisions in 1980s action movies to White House interior design flourishes – “the weave,” he calls it. But what he doesn’t talk about is often just as telling.

A few weeks ago, within 15 hours of a shooting in New York in which four people were killed, Trump called the incident “tragic” and commended a police officer, one of the victims, for making “the ultimate sacrifice.” But he’s gone nearly a week without acknowledging the death of David Rose, the Georgia police officer gunned down while protecting a federal agency’s headquarters from a gunman aiming to kill federal employees inside.

The different responses highlight how selective the focus of the president – who regularly speaks with the media and has published an average of 22 social media posts a day over the past year – can be on issues ranging from political violence to his informal role as consoler in chief.

“Sometimes his attention is really quick and fleeting and not systematic, so while there are some issues he can’t stop talking about, there are some that don’t interest him,” said Julian Zelizer, political historian at Princeton University.

But, like all politicians, Trump also deliberately tries to avoid political land mines, Zelizer added, and he may be leery of mentioning the CDC shooting because it connects violence – specifically, violence against law enforcement – with fervent opposition to the coronavirus vaccine, an outlook prevalent within his MAGA base.

The White House said that Trump has consistently supported law enforcement officers, noting that he signed an executive order in April to “unleash” police across the country and that the National Fraternal Order of Police praised his massive tax-and-immigration bill, saying it would let officers keep more of their overtime pay.

“Actions speak louder than words,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email.

“The Fake News media should talk about these facts instead of idiotically fixating on President Trump not mentioning every single individual act of despicable violence against police officers.”

Bob Hillis, president of the Fraternal Order of Police in DeKalb County, where Rose worked, said he believes Rose’s sacrifice deserves the president’s acknowledgment. He doesn’t blame Trump for not doing so, however. He called Trump “a steadfast supporter of law enforcement and the Fraternal Order of Police.”

Hillis noted that 55 law enforcement officers have died across the country in the line of duty this year, four since Rose was shot.

Unlike those others, Rose, 33, died protecting federal employees in an act that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described as political violence. Kennedy said he hoped to meet with Rose’s wife and two children and called CDC employees the heart of a “shining star health agency around the world.”

“They work in silence saving us all,” Kennedy said in an interview posted Monday. “They should not be the targets of this kind of violence from anybody.”

Many CDC employees have faulted Trump and Kennedy for stoking vaccine denialism. Before joining the government, Kennedy falsely called the coronavirus vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made” and said it contained a “poison.”

In the six days since the shooting, Trump posted more than 120 times on social media, focusing repeatedly on a list of well-aired grudges and conspiracy theories: President Joe Biden’s use of an autopen, his allegations that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, persistent public interest in the release of files from the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, and his administration’s efforts to uncover what he insists was an Obama administration conspiracy against him during the 2016 election.

“When he wants to focus on immigration, tariffs, Obama, he will talk about it incessantly,” Zelizer said.

In June, after two lawmakers in Minnesota were shot to death in their homes, Trump didn’t call Gov. Tim Walz (D), the sort of gesture other presidents might routinely have made.

Trump condemned political violence, but when asked days later about speaking to Walz, the president rejected the idea. “Why would I call him? I could call him and say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. I could be nice and call but why waste time?” Trump said of Walz.

Political subjects aren’t the only ones on which Trump’s sometimes arbitrary-seeming responses have befuddled those who watch him recognize others’ suffering while ignoring theirs.

The Rev. Brad Davis, a Unity Methodist pastor serving rural Appalachia in southern West Virginia, is still sleeping in a parishioner’s garage, six months after historic flooding wrecked his home and killed 17 in West Virginia and neighboring Kentucky.

Trump didn’t acknowledge the deadly flooding for months, so some of Davis’s parishioners were disconcerted when he took to social media the day after a deluge slammed Central Texas with flooding that would kill more than 130 people. In his post, the president said his administration was working with state and local officials, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem was on the way and he and first lady Melania Trump were praying for those hurt by “this horrible tragedy.” He signed off with an all-caps rallying cry.

“GOD BLESS THE FAMILIES, AND GOD BLESS TEXAS!”

A week later, he and the first lady flew down to inspect the damage, thank first responders, console victims’ families and pledge unconditional support.

By contrast, Trump did not go to West Virginia or Kentucky when the floods struck there in February. He posted on social media nearly 200 times in the week after the flooding, discussing subjects that included NASCAR, his newest book and “the war on woke,” but never mentioned the disaster.

The White House Rapid Response X account did retweet a post about a week and a half after the floods from Noem.

“In response to the catastrophic flooding in Kentucky, President Donald Trump and I are resolute in our commitment to modernize disaster relief,” she tweeted.

Davis, who serves a flock of about 50 in five communities spread across McDowell County, said a visit, a kind word or any mention at all directly from the president would have meant a lot to people. Davis’s neck of the woods in southern West Virginia is home to some of the most ardent Trump supporters in the country. Nearly 80% of the county voted for him in November.

As the days, weeks and then months went by without acknowledgment from the president, he said, some felt betrayed.

“For the president to acknowledge that we were going through a difficult time, and we were in need and he was aware of it … for some folks that would have been everything,” he added.

A White House official said the Texas floods were the deadliest event of Trump’s second term, so it’s inapt to compare that to the floods in West Virginia and Kentucky or other natural disasters.

“And just because the President does not publicly address something,” the official said, “does not mean it’s not in his mind or something the Administration is working on.”