A profile of Donald Trump Jr.'s unexpected rise in influence during the second Trump administration. Despite past mockery for his online persona and perceived lack of political acumen, Trump Jr. has emerged as a key figure in shaping the new administration.
Slate's reluctant guide to the people who will be calling the shots now—at least for as long as they last in Washington. During the first Trump administration, the president’s opponents had a reflexive habit of mocking Donald Trump Jr. as a too-online failson who would never get the only thing he really wanted: his father’s love. A 2018 GQ piece by Julia Ioffe was typical, highlighting the shameful little biographical nuggets that, to gloating onlookers, proved that Trump Sr.
had been an awful dad—the kind of father that no self-respecting son would try so hard to please. (Ivana Trump wrote in her memoir that Sr. didn’t want to give Jr. his name, because “What if he’s a loser?”) This habit of regarding Trump Jr. as a pathetic clownboy reached its peak around the time he became too prominent a figure in the Mueller investigation and thus incurred his dad’s wrath, the president’s aides nicknamed Don Jr. “The Comeback Kid”. It didn’t help that he has always had a serious case of posting disease, lashing out constantly and combatively on every front of the culture war. It was way too fun to be mean back. That all might be best left behind in the 2010s. Annoyingly to all the haters and losers, Trump Jr. comes into the new Trump administration doing just great. Famously, he was one of the first people in Trump’s camp to connect with J.D. Vance, having been (somehow) a big fan of. He also urged a closer relationship between Trump Sr. and RFK Jr. and backed several successful Republican candidates for the Senate. His goal in assisting the transition, as we are told, has been to keep people who would be disloyal to his father out of the new administration—in other words, to do things differently this time. Despite these recent political successes, Trump Jr. is not taking on a formal role in the second administration, instead concentrating on business. He’s working inside what the Wall Street Journal calls the “Trump-ification of everything, including DEI. In late 2024 and early 2025, a spate of announcements about Trump Jr.’s new affiliations in that world dropped: He’s Dan Kois - All of which goes to show that sometimes, never putting down your phone and being way too culture war–pilled pays off. The day after the would-be Treasurer of the United States of America made a big deal about his family being “totally canceled” by banks, he flew to Greenland in early January, for which he had the stated mission of making “video content for podcasting,” headlines deemed the trip “Trump Jr.’s Climate Change Denial Tour”. But you underestimate this guy’s big, shiny white smile and endlessly creative streak of anti-woke invective at your own peril. The president, said in a late-November interview for its Person of the Year cover story, that Trump Jr. would “do very well” if he chose a future in politics: “He’s a very capable guy.” These words would have been inconceivable five years ago. This year is something else
DONALD TRUMP JR. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION POLITICS INFLUENCE BUSINESS CULTURE WAR DEFIANCE
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