He has to finish his jail time first.Earlier in his life, Trump Jr. reacted to the chaos that often surrounds his father by bailing out. As a young man, he fled to Colorado, far from his father’s empire. More recently, after his father’s election, he [...] said he’d be a voice for conservationists. He said he’d be an independent businessman, withdrawn from politics.
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He told conservation groups — often skeptical of his real estate developer father — that he’d be their ally in the White House, fighting to protect wildlife habitat and hunters’ access to federal lands.
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More recently, after his father’s election, he sought to carve out his own identity, separate from the president’s flame-throwing politics. Trump Jr. said he’d be a voice for conservationists. He said he’d be an independent businessman, withdrawn from politics.
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When his father won, and Ivanka followed him to Washington, Trump Jr. and Eric were given control of the Trump Organization. They vowed to step back from politics — “It’s not human most of the time,” Trump Jr. told the New York Times — and focus on the business.
Their plan: build dozens of new hotels, mostly in smaller cities, which would turn Trump voters into Trump Organization customers.
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At the Trump Organization, the planned hotel expansion hasn’t happened. Instead, the company has fought to hang on to its existing hotels, as President Trump’s rise curdled the brand in some quarters.
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Trump Jr. has mainly stepped back and let Eric wrestle with the Trump Organization’s problems.
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Trump Jr. had laid out three possible roles for himself: conservationist, uniter, businessman.
None lasted.
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On conservation, Trump Jr. did have some impact early on: He helped choose Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) as interior secretary. Conservation groups approved, believing the other candidates would give too much leeway to oil and mining interests.
But after that, Trump Jr. seemed to cut off contact with environmentalists.
“Hey, I need to talk to you,” Whit Fosburgh, head of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, texted to Trump Jr. last year, hoping to ask for his help again. Fosburgh felt that, despite Zinke’s appointment, the Trump administration was still giving oil and mining companies the upper hand.
“He wrote back, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you,’ ” Fosburgh said. He said Trump Jr. explained that media scrutiny of his role had caused him to give up his policy influence.
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If the president fires Zinke [who is the subject of a raft of internal investigations], a move administration officials said he is now considering, Trump Jr.’s most visible impact on his father’s administration will be gone, too.
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For more than a year, but especially in recent months, Trump Jr. has carved out a newly aggressive role, adopting his father’s approach to politics — a mixture of bragging, grievance, flirtation with far-right figures and gleeful trolling of liberals and the media.
In recent days, for example, Trump Jr. has used Twitter to spread conspiracy theories and incorrect accusations about the counting of votes in Florida, incorrectly claiming that “Nearly 200,000 Florida voters may not be citizens.” The article he linked to in that tweet was from 2012, and it reported that the actual number of non-citizens found on Florida voter rolls was 85.
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“Basically, Trump Jr. is the voice of undiluted Trumpism,” said longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone.
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This year, Trump Jr., working with a few former GOP campaign officials, spoke at rallies and fundraisers for Republican candidates across the country. Campaign operatives say they value him for his versatility: He’s good with wealthy donors at high-dollar fundraisers. He’s good on stage, with a crowd.
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In such appearances, Trump Jr. mimics some of his father’s mannerisms — chopping the air with a thumb and forefinger together in an “okay” gesture — veering from I’m-not-tired-of-winning triumphalism into angry resentment that his father doesn’t get the credit he deserves.
“Kill after kill,” he said on a radio show in Montana, bemoaning criticism from Democrats and the media. “Is he not winning? Is it not a track record of success? Is it not an incredible conservative accomplishment?”
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On social media, he goes further, recently tweeting that Maine Sen. Angus King “wants to repopulate Maine with Syrian and Somalian refugees.”
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Onstage [campaigning], he’d start by sketching his life history, beginning with a story about breaking away.
“I’m the first graduate of the Wharton School of Finance — where my dad went to school — to move out to Colorado, actually, to be a bartender and a fly-fishing guide on the side,” he told a Montana radio station this year.
Up to that point, Trump Jr. had a sometimes distant relationship with his famous father, friends say. The son spent summers in Czechoslovakia, with his mother’s parents. His parents’ marriage broke up — bitterly, publicly — when he was 12. He didn’t speak to his father for some time after that.
In Colorado, the son added physical distance to the emotional divide. He partied and tended bar, but he also spent time hunting and fishing.
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[H]e stayed only a year, coming home to Manhattan and taking a job at the Trump Organization, as his brother Eric and sister Ivanka eventually would, too.
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He took up his dad’s old role as a talk-radio guest, pushing boundaries and mocking the politically correct crowd. “You can’t even make fat jokes now!” he said on the raunchy “Opie and Anthony Show” in 2012.
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Trump Jr. made his love life into a public performance, just as his father had, even if the audiences were smaller.
His father, for instance, once announced his engagement on national TV. Trump Jr. got engaged at a mall in Short Hills, N.J., as part of a publicity stunt for a jewelry store.
After he was married, Trump Jr. also had a habit of tweeting out public messages to attractive women.
“@Hopedworaczyk towel in bubble bath u just ruined every pervs night including me,” Trump Jr. wrote at 10 p.m. one evening in 2011, eschewing punctuation in a public Twitter message to model Hope Dworaczyk. He seemed to be referring to a photo or video of Dworaczyk. “Yes wife will B beating me again when she reads this! 3 2 1.”
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“‘Don, what do you know about politics?’” he recalled his father asking at the start of the 2016 campaign.
“I dunno,” he replied, “I watched the news last night.”
In his father’s threadbare campaign, that was enough.
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People around Trump Jr. have speculated about what he will do with the platform he has created for himself.
“Politically active people look at him and say, ‘He’s the president’s son. Who knows?’ ” Cramer said. “Maybe he could be a senator or a governor, or who knows what, really. I do think people look at him and see a political future there, as opposed to just a first son.”
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Last year, Trump Jr. seemed to entertain that idea himself: At a speech to a gun club on Long Island, somebody asked whether he’d run for New York governor.
“His eyes lit up, he got wide-eyed, got a big smile on his face” and said he’d consider it, said Brad Gerstman, a New York lawyer and lobbyist who was there.
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Today, friends say they don’t believe Trump Jr. has any near-term ambition to step out on his own as a candidate.
WaPo
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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