As the Trump presidency bears down on the world, I hope we can all concur on the prospect of being subjected to regular appearances by Donald Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr. Can you stand him, this pissy little Ivy League Uday, whose chin successfully escaped from the rest of his body at some point in the last Trump administration, and whose every political intervention my brain simply translates as “look Daddy – I used the potty!”? If so, please send tips.
There really is no beta like the beta son to the alpha father, and Don Jr embodies the form. He is a full 46 years old, yet forever at hand with the intimation that his dad could beat yours in a fight. It is impossible to watch a single one of Don’s public honkings without imagining his reedy inner voice going: “Did you see it, Dad? Did you see what I said on TV? Dad? Dad? No, OK you’re busy …”
We could probably all grit our way through Don Jr’s turbo-obnoxious inanities if they were limited to his specialist subjects, such as “life after a mandible” and “ripped guys who talked to me at UFC because of my dad”. But hearing him on Ukraine is not so much a step too far as a long march beyond the bounds of the acceptable. Unfortunately, this is where the cartography currently places us. Don Jr recently shared a video of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the caption “POV: you’re 38 days from losing your allowance”. By way of a reminder, the Ukrainian people are 1,000 days into a devastating war they didn’t start, while Don’s personal struggles have amounted to not getting a wedgie at private school. (A goal with which his entire demeanour suggests he achieved limited success.)
The latest international address by our tragic Manhattan princeling saw him offer up an outburst on Joe Biden’s agreement to supply US long-range Atacms missiles to Ukraine to use against Russian and North Korean forces in the Kursk region. “The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” this ran. “Gotta lock in those $Trillions! Life be damned!!! Imbeciles!”
High praise. Of course, it’s pretty easy to “create peace” if you just give the strongest party or parties whatever they want. You’d imagine Don Jr could do a tight 10 on the art-of-the-deal of the treaty of Versailles, but which of us in possession of an iota of foresight, or indeed hindsight, would wish to hear it?
Regrettably, the sense that he should be neither seen nor heard has yet to penetrate the Junior cranium – but then he has trouble reading rooms. He proposed to his now ex-wife at a jewellery store in front of cameras, so he could get the $100,000 ring for free, and was mystified when even his father publicly found it tacky.
Still, consider the photo of the Trump clan released soon after Don Sr’s election win, which suggests Don Jr has been cuckooed in the family nest by recent foster billionaire Elon Musk. Exciting to be the eldest child then to suddenly gain a new big brother! Especially one who your dad wants to involve in absolutely everything while you act super cool about it. I enjoyed the picture of Don being allowed to sit at the private jet table with his father, RFK and Musk. It was captioned “Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW”, but again, my mind simply rearranged that into “Look Daddy! They let me hold some fries!” But listen, it could be worse. He could be alleged vice-president-elect JD Vance, who currently appears not simply to have been left stranded at the airport, but committed to one of the better witness protection programmes.
As for our jolly airborne team, you can only imagine the factional machinations that will fairly soon overwhelm that particular Mount Olympus. But for now, everyone is playing happy blended families, with Don Jr still firing out shitposts in the hope that it looks as impressive as being the world’s richest man and catching a falling space rocket with some chopsticks. As one of his recent salvoes had it: “Now that woke is dead can we take out perpetual victim mentality next???” Which means so much more coming from the son of a man whose “poor me” gland is swollen to the point of insurrection.
Arguably, of course, the biggest alarm bells concerning Don Jr are those persistent hints that he harbours political ambitions himself. Experience suggests that wouldn’t be beyond the realms of the achievable. For a country that went to so much trouble to overthrow a monarchy, the US has spent a remarkable proportion of the past few decades attempting to pass its presidency down dynasties (in the case of the Bushes), or within marriages (in the case of the Clintons).
Yet something about Earth’s least-deserving nepo-baby stops one short of fearing the worst on this front. Even if Trump fulfils his stated promise and acts like “a dictator” on day one, you can’t help feeling Don Jr is merely the equivalent of the outlandish gilt furniture which decoratively challenged authoritarians typically scatter around the palace compound to make it feel less empty. He’s hideous, he’s wooden, and he doesn’t really serve any meaningful purpose – at least until the inevitable day he gets grabbed and used as a shield.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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