Donald Trump Jr: revered by the right, and building his own political base

Donald Trump Jr is a man under pressure, but also in fierce demand.

To sworn enemies of Trump World he is at the centre of everything objectionable – from alleged election campaign collusion with Russia and the Trump Organization’s pursuit of global wealth to aggressive trolling of liberals on social media.

But, in a parallel political universe, there are the millions of Americans who love him. And, away from the firestorm that is the ongoing Robert Mueller Russia investigation, the president’s eldest son is building a considerable conservative fanbase. This constituency sees him as an authentic figure with a political future – assuming he can get out from under the Mueller investigation.

He is also becoming an effective political fundraiser with the support of wealthy loyalist friends like fellow son of a billionaire Tommy Hicks Jr. And America’s millions of hunters and shooters adore him on social media and regularly exhort him to run in 2024.

Profile

Donald Trump Jr

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Born

31 December 1977 in Manhattan

Career

After brief stint bartending in Aspen, he moved back to New York to join the Trump Organization, supervising Trump Park Avenue and other projects. He took an interest in other family enterprises in later years, appearing as a guest adviser on his father’s reality television show The Apprentice and as a judge of various Miss USA pageants.

High point

Just before the news of his meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, he was riding high as executive director of The Trump Organization and one of the president’s closest confidants.

Low point

On Tuesday 11 July 2017, he produced the most damning evidence yet in the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the US election, catapulting himself on to the international stage with emails showing he knowingly met with a Russian lawyer claiming to have “dirt” on his father’s rival.

He says

“I think I probably got a lot of my father’s natural security, or ego, or whatever … I can be my own person and not have to live under his shadow. I definitely look up to him in many ways – I’d like to be more like him when it comes to business – but I think I’m such a different person, it’s hard to even compare us. His work persona is kind of what he is. I have a work face, and then there’s my private life,” – Trump Jr to New York magazine, 2004.

They say

“It’s a do-anything-you-can-to-win world that he’s part of, and his eagerness to meet with this lawyer, who was very explicitly described as having information that came from Russian government sources – there’s no mystery there. There’s no veil. There’s not even one veil. Her name wasn’t mentioned but everything else was very explicit and he leaps at it. That’s all part of this all-that-matters-is-winning, there’s winning and there’s losing, that’s it. That’s the value system and in that way, he very much echoes his father.” – Gwenda Blair, Trump biographer, to the Guardian, 12 July 2017.

Now he is preparing to step out as a star turn for Republicans who have shown fealty to the Trump agenda as they fight for their political lives in November’s crucial midterm elections. He is busy building his own profile. Last week, West Virginia Republican Patrick Morrisey, who is hoping to unseat Democratic senator Joe Manchin in November, announced Trump Jr would join him for a 5 June fundraiser lunch with tickets going for up to $5,400.

Trump Jr will also headline an August fundraiser in a private Long Island mansion for New York congressman Lee Zeldin, who has been a vocal critic of the Mueller investigation and who last week joined a group of House Republicans in calling for a rival special counsel inquiry into the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Boyd Matheson, Republican strategist and a former congressional chief of staff, said of Trump Jr: “From the Republican party standpoint, he very much is the guy. He can be the face, he can go out with the hunters.”

But it is not all plain sailing. Many conservative groups are wary of getting too close not because of the question marks over Trump Jr, Matheson said. “Some of them are waiting for the next shoe to drop. Has he done something that’s beyond unethical or moral, has he broken laws, done things that are gonna be big issues?”

While he has been de facto head of the family firm since “the big guy”, as he calls his father, became president, Trump Jr seems to more commonly have his next outdoor adventure in his sights.

As his 1.1 million Instagram followers know, Trump Jr was up a mountain in Utah spending “quality time in the woods” with a group of friends, when the latest wave of scrutiny hit his complicated life amid revelations of a previously unknown meeting with people seeking access to his father.

His Instagram pictures show him dressed in full camouflage Kuiu mountain gear at 10,000ft, then meeting Robert J O’Neill, the former US Navy Seal who fired the shot that killed Osama bin Laden (prompting social media fans to bill them as a 2024 election dream team).

Trump may have been in a shirt monogrammed with his initials for that one – because the son of a New York billionaire cannot always be successfully camouflaged – but he is authentically rugged.

Hunting, fishing, free-diving for conch, or “ripping it up” on his Sabercat 700 snowmobile, a visit to the Trump Jr social media feed is like going on the set of an action movie, where no trout, shark or quail is safe. If he is not “getting a little range time” with his buddies in Texas, he’s off in the Yukon surviving on freeze-dried rations and melted snow.

There are 11.5 million hunters in the United States and Trump Jr treats them as his constituency, along with the National Rifle Association supporters of the second amendment right to bear arms.

Mike Siaperas, who has known Trump Jr since election year, hosted him at his ranch in south-eastern Utah this month, where his company 106 Reforestation pioneers techniques for clearing and regrowing Aspen trees at high altitude, to encourage wildlife and prevent catastrophic wildfires.

“My whole work has been based on conservation the past five to 10 years, and Don Jr was gracious enough to come and see the work I have done,” he said. “And as far as I am concerned, Don Jr is probably the best thing that has ever happened to conservation and wildlife in the past 100 years. Everything about him is genuine. He’s an amazing gentleman.

“I know there’s a perception of him out there in different ways, but he’s by far, probably the most important single man in the United States for conservation and wildlife.”

Asked if he thought Trump Jr wanted to run for office himself, Siaperis said: “Yeah, that’s his goal. I don’t have those conversations with him, but from my standpoint, if he ever decided to do that, that would be the most important vote I ever cast in my lifetime.

“There are a lot of posers on the path to political office; he’s not that. He’s the real deal.”

Trump Jr has laughed off earlier suggestions he might run to become governor of New York. But for some observers, he has given the impression ever since he gave an antagonistic speech at the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland, that he thought he might be the next in line in a great political dynasty.

Black hair slicked back, cries of “Trump, Trump, Trump” ringing in his ears, he seemed like a more controlled version of his father – just as pugnacious, but more packaged.

For now, however, special counsel Mueller is still circling, investigating his role in possible collusion between Russia and the Trump election campaign.

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Trump Jr brokered that Trump Tower meeting with Russians who had promised to deliver damaging dirt on Hillary Clinton, emailing a fixer: “If it’s what you say, I love it.”

Further emails showed that when the meeting eventually came to light, the Trump Organization coordinated with the Russians involved on what to tell the public.

While Trump Jr was heading west to Utah, the New York Times published details of another election year meeting when Trump Jr was told by an emissary for two princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that they were eager to help his father win the presidency.

There is no evidence that the meeting led to anything, but it further muddies Trump World’s already murky pool of overlapping interests.

Democratic senator Chris Coons has urged the senate judiciary committee to call Trump Jr back for an open hearing amid concerns he may have lied to Congress about his knowledge of foreign assistance offers to the Trump campaign.

Separately, ethics watchdogs in Washington have eyes on his business dealings at the Trump Organization. Trump Jr is a private citizen and, unlike his sister Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, plays no formal part in the administration. But the upending of convention which has come with the Trump White House means that the son is an important figure at the nexus of the family’s web of interests.

“When it comes to Don Jr, a lot of what we look at has to do with how the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization and the Trump administration tend to all overlap, and he seems to be at the centre of a lot of that,” said Jordan Libowitz, communications director at the legal watchdog organization Crew (Citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington).

“He seems to be running the Trump Organization, and that makes you question what kind of firewall there is between him and his father. They might claim there is one, but there doesn’t seem to be much of one at all.”

Reassurances were given a few days before Trump’s inauguration that there would be “no new foreign deals”, but the Center for American Progress (Cap), the progressive thinktank which has been tracking Trump’s global conflicts of interest, notes the pledge has proven to be an elastic concept.

Libowitz at Crew, and John Norris and senior analyst Carolyn Kenney at Cap see troubling conflicts in a range of ongoing projects – four luxury Trump Tower residential buildings in India; a Malaysian government-funded toll road connecting to a Trump property in Bali; the sudden granting of trademark licences in China.

They also raise questions about projects in Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Dubai and Indonesia all continuing in conjunction with international diplomatic and trade discussions.

Trump Jr’s trip to India in February revealed that wealthy investors could pay for access to the president’s son by agreeing to buy an apartment. “During his last visit newspapers all around the country had front page adverts in which they offered for a down payment, a chance to meet with him and have dinner with him,” Libowitz said. “So access to Don Jr is certainly available for the right price – that raises the question whether there is by proxy access to the president.”

Trump Jr has also been cashing in with paid speeches – including one to graduating American students in Dubai. His agent for speaking appearances lists his fee as starting from $50,000.

Trump Jr also faces further scrutiny over his private life. The 40-year-old, who had to endure his own parents painfully public divorce, is now also going through a marriage breakup of his own. But Trump Jr drives on, full of #Maga #winning bravado, slaying the haters and losers as his father’s greatest online cheerleader.