Delusion runs wide and deep within the shallow swamp of Trump hangers-on, fiends, and misfits. That said, the recent pronouncement by Brad Parscale, the president’s 2020 campaign manager, is worrisome even given the Trump clan’s reputation of being world-class fabulists and liars. At a Republican convention in Indian Wells, California, he declared that “the Trumps will be a dynasty that lasts for decades.”
It was the sort of comment that, regardless of the messenger, sends shudders down the spines of most sentient world citizens. It was also the sort of comment that Parscale’s boss—humanity’s foremost flattery magnet—would love, and it would therefore ensure his campaign manager job security for the foreseeable future. A Trump dynasty? Really? If we’re going to choose reality-TV oddballs to lead the nation into the next troubled decade, I’d rather see the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty in the White House.
With the Democrats doing almost everything in their power to ensure another four years of Trumpian chaos, the lower-rung members of the president’s family are already jockeying for their own spots in the nascent dynasty. This should prove harrowing but also entertaining. As much as the paterfamilias was, before he was elected, the sort of character who could deftly hold court at the back of a sports bar after the game was over, many of the Trump kids would have trouble finding the television set.
I’d rather see the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty in the White House.
The second or third dimmest of the Trump offspring—the ranking changes almost daily—is coming out with one of those political-statement books potential candidates have someone write for them in the walk-up to a run for office. Donald Trump Jr., the Uday to his brother-in-law Jared Kushner’s Qusay, has a tract coming out in early November, with a title that an Onion headline writer would have trouble conjuring. It’s called Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us, and it will, the publisher says, “expose all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives.” In a bit of showmanship that might even impress his father, Don junior recently posted that “this is the book the leftist elites don’t want you to read.” He clearly has not heeded the advice to think before you write and read before you think.
The infighting and positioning among the Trump family members most eager to climb politics’ greasy pole—Don junior, Jared, and Ivanka—make the machinations of the Roys of Succession look like a Partridge-family Sunday-night dinner. Ivanka and Jared have blotted their copy books with their posturing and conniving—a wicked combination best left to the professionals.
The result is that they’ve temporarily blown their chances—both with the president’s base and, for the moment, with the president himself. Providing some joy to other junior members of the family, Jared and Ivanka have become objects of serial scorn and derision in the unforgiving Twittersphere.
Don junior gets his own share of ridicule, but he’s also something of a draw with the hook-and-bullet crowd, a subset of the Republican base, and therefore of current use to his father. For the moment, Don junior has the upper hand in the tawdry Trump sweepstakes. That is, until the president sees something shinier in one of his other children on Fox News—and they all are quite shiny anyway. It might well be said that the forgotten two of the Trump spawn, Eric and Tiffany, may emerge out of the competitive family cage match with something approaching dignity and resolve. With all that their father has put them through, they deserve something. As for Don junior, if things go pear-shaped politically, he always has his literary career to fall back on.