As the Trump kids struggle with the realization of their father’s diminished station within the Republican Party and the world, they continue their signature missteps. Yes, the president’s large adult children aren’t taking their father’s unraveling in stride. In fact, the presidential spawns, who have long considered themselves the future of the Republican Party of which they’ve only been members since 2016, are now like violinists on the Titanic serenading daddy as he continues to kill his constituents.
Ivanka Trump continues her nebulous work creating “initiatives.” First there was the great “success” of her Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, which won praise from daddy’s secretary of state, Mike “the Rapture Is Coming” Pompeo, even if no one has heard much about it since February. Ivanka has now decided to pivot to unemployment. And who better to talk about jobs than the woman who has never had one?
But that’s not really fair. Ivanka has had so many jobs! She worked for her dad’s failing hotel business, she “wrote” “books,” she sold diamond jewelry with a tax cheater name Moshe Lax, and she ran sweatshops. But Ivanka, with a keen self-awareness, knows those careers are not available to everyone, so she’s introducing her most tone-deaf foray into governmenting ever. The catchphrase is something that even Marie Antoinette might balk at: “Find something new!” As if people can just pick up in the middle of a deadly pandemic that her father miserably failed to arrest and go, “Gee, I think I’ll change my career!”
Ivanka is so right to be concerned about American unemployment, as it hovers around 11.1 percent—down from April’s 14.7 percent, but still higher than any point during the Great Recession. This situation is made significantly worse by the reality that the extra $600 unemployment is set to expire on July 25. And the American economy shows no sign of recovering, as it turns out that ignoring a pandemic is not the best way to solve it.
Not even Wrong-About-Everything Larry Kudlow could have predicted that America having no plan or strategy and letting dumb, Trumpy governors reopen too fast only to have to shut down again would be bad for the American worker. I mean honestly, who could have seen that coming, except everyone?
Perhaps if the Trump administration had spent more time on a federal testing and tracing program and less time trying to discredit Anthony Fauci?
But Ivanka is not the only Trump kid searching for relevance in a world where daddy is on a trajectory to get pasted in November. There’s Junior. Junior, you see, has decided that he will be the family bard. Yes, Donald Trump Jr. has turned his eye to literature. As a writer myself, I must admit that many of us are worried we’ll soon be replaced by the guy who somehow has to self-publish his second book, despite his first making the best-seller list. Now why was Junior’s first book on the best-seller list, you might ask? Perhaps because the RNC bought $100,000 worth of it?
But Junior’s announcement of his second book was not all champagne dreams and caviar wishes. It was also large amounts of internet mockery at the misplaced apostrophe in the title of the book. While many books might have the occasional typo, publishers are generally able to catch the ones on the cover. The cover announced the title as Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden and the Democrat’s Defense of the Indefensible.
The irony of the guy who was given a pass by Bob Mueller complaining about other people’s privilege is pretty thick, but this is not the only misstep that’s plagued the simple son this week.
Junior found himself the inadvertent star of an attack ad targeting his own father. An advertisement titled “Bye Don JR” by the liberal PAC MeidasTouch used Junior’s harsh words targeting the Biden family as the narration for video that featured the Trump family. MeidasTouch added, “Everything Don Jr. says is a projection to cover up the criminal activity he and his family engage in on a daily basis.”
And while there’s a temptation to feel bad for the president’s large angry adult son, Junior spent much of the weekend tweeting angry stuff about Biden and a piece from the very Trump-friendly, Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, which ran a story about Biden’s niece and a 2019 DUI arrest, which ended in her not being charged. The irony of this is that Junior himself was arrested but never charged for public intoxication in New Orleans in 2001. The timing of the Biden niece story seemed a bit odd as it was from 2019, and ran in a deeply Trump-friendly venue but I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
As their father continues to implode, it becomes clearer and clearer that his large adult children will not be the future of the Republican Party. I’m no fan of the Republican Party, but even they can do better than Junior and Ivanka. It does however seem very likely the president kids will not go quietly into that good night. Expect more tweets, more nebulous initiatives, and more angry interviews on Fox News. Pandemics are back, American political dynasties aren’t.