Donald Trump Jr will be a fixture in Republican politics in the years to come, regardless of whether his father wins re-election. Already, speculation runs rampant that the president’s oldest son will be on the presidential ballot in 2024.
Triggered, Don Jr’s first book, was a better campaign autobiography than most. For all its vitriol, it was personally revealing and laced with humor. By contrast, Liberal Privilege is a nonstop attack on the Bidens, the Democratic party and the media.
Think of it as Maga porn. As Steve Bannon told the Senate intelligence committee, Don Jr is “a guy who believes everything on Breitbart is true”. Don Jr is also the fellow who on Thursday proclaimed that Covid-19 deaths were “almost nothing” when, in reality, the US daily death toll had exceeded 1,000.
Liberal Privilege offers a cornucopia of delectation for Trumpworld’s denizens. It is graced with endorsements from Laura Ingraham, Senator Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz, a Florida representative and key Trump ally. Inside, Trump Jr drops the word “bullshit” 12 times but also adds 30 pages of footnotes.
Substantively, Trump Jr endeavors to make the case that Biden is addled and his family is corrupt. Regarding Biden’s wellbeing, the author enlists the assistance of Ronny Jackson MD to take down the Democratic nominee.
A former presidential physician, Jackson is currently a Republican congressional candidate. In 2018, he withdrew as nominee for secretary of veterans affairs after an array of misconduct allegations. Regarding Biden, Jackson declines to offer a formal diagnosis of dementia. That would be outside the bounds of medical practice. But he claims Biden “can’t form sentences” and “that something is not right”. In light of Biden’s debate wins, Jackson’s take on the Democrat’s mental acuity is best described as suspect – and that is being kind.
Liberal Privilege offers no explanation for the president’s unscheduled visit to Walter Reed hospital in November 2019. Even more than the president’s finances, that trip remains shrouded in mystery.
Biden can bound staircases and hold an ice cream cone. Trump required military assistance to walk down a ramp, and struggles to drink water without two hands. “Thighland” is a destination in the president’s malapropism-filled lexicon, when he isn’t dreaming of being Superman.
When it comes to family members trading on public office, Liberal Privilege is on somewhat firmer ground. Back in 2014, Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private natural gas producer, announced that Hunter had joined its board. To which the White House could only reply: “Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens, and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice-president or president.” Then there are the allegations concerning Hunter and China.
Trump and his presidency, however, are in a league of his own. Few norms remain unshattered, be it turning the federal government into a personal revenue stream, refusing to release tax returns, disparaging war dead or holding campaign rallies on the White House lawn.
Only recently, the public learned from the New York Times that the president holds a Chinese bank account, paid the PRC more than $188,000 in taxes, but just $750 to the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, Ivanka, the first daughter, holds intellectual property rights in China, and Jared Kushner’s sister pitched Chinese investors on Kushner properties and US visas. And then there was the scramble for foreign funding to refinance the Kushner property at 666 Fifth Avenue.
True to form, Liberal Privilege mentions cancel culture more than two dozen times without a peep of the president’s own censorship efforts. The justice department attempted to muzzle John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser. Trump’s personal lawyers sought to silence Mary Trump, his niece. Both had written unflattering books.
The government is taking aim at Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania Trump’s former personal aide. The Trump campaign’s arbitration claim against Omarosa appears to be going nowhere fast. Cancelation is definitely in the eyes of the beholder, and the Trumps do a great job of acting like the very snowflakes they claim to detest.
Yet, when it comes to Liberal Privilege’s criticism of the media, the press would do well to pay heed: they are distrusted even as the public sees them as invaluable to democracy. By the numbers, a third of the US has no trust in the fourth estate and more than a quarter possess “not very much”.
Trump Jr also looks to tether Biden to Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont. Here too, he generates more heat than light. By temperament and record, Biden is no socialist. He beat Sanders in the primaries. The financial industry has donated tens of millions to the Biden campaign.
Indeed, out of a lack of confidence in Biden’s embrace of their agenda, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the “Squad” have demanded corporative executives be barred from serving in his cabinet. Good luck with that.
While Liberal Privilege will change few votes, it sets the bar for the GOP’s future. Although Democrats and liberals may recoil, and Mike Pence must look over his shoulder, Don Jr has done himself a favor.
Ivanka holds Donald Trump’s heart and gaze, but it is her brother who has captured the imagination of the faithful. He is the actual Republican. Their grievances are his armour.
