Eric Trump has brushed off the fierce backlash to renaming Palm Beach’s airport after his dad, calling the move only “slightly controversial” during a cozy chat on Fox & Friends.
The president’s second son, 42, spoke as Palm Beach International Airport completed its switch to President Donald J. Trump International Airport on Thursday, with its longtime PBI code giving way to DJT.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 47, signed the renaming bill in March. The airport sits roughly five miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The younger Trump insisted that the change had enjoyed overwhelming backing, ticking off the governor, state lawmakers, and all five carriers that fly out of the airport. He credited his father with putting the region on the map.
“He’s a man that deserves it, a man that’s done so much for this country. He’s fought like hell for all of us,” he said of his 80-year-old father. “As a son who worked so hard to make this happen, I couldn’t be more proud. Today was a really special moment”
Eric Trump said nothing about the lawsuits, boycotts, and even bomb threats the plan has drawn. Those objections have been hard to miss. Since the idea surfaced, travelers buried the airport’s website with furious messages, nearly all of them opposed to it.
One anonymous writer claimed to have hidden explosives at the airport and on a plane, threatening to set them off unless they were paid $30 million. Seventeen more raised Trump’s past friendship with pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Elected officials and pilots have pushed harder. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Democrat whose district takes in Palm Beach, branded the move “misguided and unfair” and accused state lawmakers of steamrolling locals, The Hill reported.
Palm Beach Gardens pilot George W. Poncy Jr. sued DeSantis, the state, and its transportation department in April, arguing the law overrides county home rule and could scramble aviation charts and databases. Democratic congressional candidate Victoria Doyle filed a separate suit to freeze county spending on the switch.
DeSantis’s office brushed it all aside. Communications director Alex Lanfranconi called Poncy’s complaint “one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard,” WPTV reported. The rebrand is expected to cost about $5.5 million.
Eric Trump’s victory lap also comes right in the middle of a press disaster of his very own. Bloomberg reported on Thursday morning that his crypto venture, American Bitcoin, has erased more than $600 million from the family’s fortunes since it went public in September.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Trump Organization for comment on this story.
