Junior and Eric 2: Udvay and Quesay

[SPHASH]

6 hours ago, JMarie said:

Must Guilfoyle accompany Junior EVERYWHERE???

She's his beard.

[GreyhoundFan]

Remember Udvay and his squeeze's ridiculous $50K speaking engagement at the University of Florida? Well, there's been some blow back: "University of Florida’s student president faces impeachment after bringing Donald Trump Jr. to campus for $50,000"

Spoiler

After the University of Florida’s student body president helped bring Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle to campus last month to the tune of $50,000, the school’s student government has now moved to impeach him, arguing that the speaking engagement amounted to a misuse of student fees.

On Tuesday, the student body president, Michael Murphy, was served with the impeachment resolution and accused of malfeasance and abuse of power — a development unfolding at the university just as President Trump’s public impeachment hearings begin today on Capitol Hill.

For Trump, the key piece of evidence is his July phone call with the Ukrainian president — but for Murphy it’s an email, a short exchange with a Trump campaign consultant that his critics say is proof of misconduct.

The group of senators seeking Murphy’s impeachment argue that the Oct. 10 speaking engagement for Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle, his girlfriend, was funded with mandatory student fees in violation of rules banning the use of public students funds to support or oppose a “political party at any level.” In the eyes of critics, Murphy’s correspondence with the Trump fundraising consultant ahead of the event bolsters their case that Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle’s appearance was a campaign event.

“By using student fees to advance his own expressed political beliefs at the expense of the … Student Government writ large, Mr. Murphy not only endangered students marginalized by the speakers’ white nationalist supporters, but also abused his power to advance a particular political party at the expense of the students he should represent,” the impeachment resolution states.

Murphy could not be reached for comment late Tuesday, but he has previously maintained in comments to the student newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator, that the couple’s speech was not a campaign event, and therefore didn’t violate any rules.

Murphy’s impeachment inquiry, which was initially reported by the Tampa Bay Times and the Alligator, comes as Capitol Hill gears up for the first set of testimony from William B. Taylor Jr., the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and senior State Department official George Kent.

The timing of Trump Jr.'s appearance on Florida’s campus, just as his father is facing the most palpable threat to his presidency, is in part what drew hundreds of protesters to the event. In some ways, it was akin to a Trump campaign rally. The protesters called for the president’s impeachment, yelling, “Lock him up!” while Trump’s supporters chanted, “U-S-A!” trying to drown them out, as The Washington Post reported at the time.

But Henry Fair, the head of the ACCENT Speakers Bureau, an arm of the student government, told The Post last month that “this event is a campus speaking engagement, not a campaign event.” Others questioned that claim, noting that Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle enthusiastically supported the president during their talk.

In recent weeks, the couple has traveled around the country for numerous speaking engagements, a mixture of campaign events such as a “Keep America Great” panel in San Antonio, and promotional events such as for Trump Jr'. s new book, “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.” Speaking about the book at the University of California at Los Angeles on Sunday, far-right agitators heckled Trump Jr.

But in Florida, the couple taunted the liberal protesters, with Guilfoyle telling them at one point, “I bet your parents are so proud of you,” to cheers from the pro-Trump crowd.

At one point, Guilfoyle said Trump was doing “so much for our country,” adding: “He has the balls to stand up for what’s right,” unlike other politicians who don’t have any and fall victim to a “little mini Dustbuster, like, testicular vacuum,” the Times reported. Trump Jr. said of his father’s efforts to improve the economy: “There is not a single economic metric where we are not better off today than you were three years ago,” the Times reported.

Such comments, critics said, showed that Trump and Guilfoyle were actively campaigning for the president.

“These are well-known campaign surrogates traveling the country for a political candidate,” Bobby Mermer, co-president of Graduate Assistants United at UF, told The Post in October. He added: “We would be opposed to the ACCENT bureau using student fees to fund any candidates — Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, it doesn’t matter. Have the campaigns or private funds pay for it, not mandatory student fees.”

The effort to impeach Murphy picked up steam on Oct. 30 after the student newspaper published emails between him and a Trump Victory reelection campaign official, shedding light on how Trump Jr.’s speaking engagement came about.

In the brief September email exchange, Caroline Wren, national finance consultant for Trump Victory, reached out to Murphy saying she would like to bring Trump Jr., Guilfoyle and Republican National Campaign co-chairman Tommy Hicks to the university. She recalled that she and Murphy met at her house on the Fourth of July. At that time, Murphy mentioned that he’d like to bring Trump Jr. to campus, as he told the Alligator.

Murphy — already seen on campus as well-connected since his father is a Republican lobbyist and has donated to Trump — responded to Wren’s email saying he would “love to hop on a call” to get the event rolling.

In a statement, Wren told The Post that she was reaching out in her personal capacity on her private email — linked to her company, Bluebonnet Fundraising — and “mistakenly forgot to remove my Trump Victory signature.”

“After an initial call to discuss a potential visit, University of Florida representatives were connected to Donald Trump Jr.'s office,” she said in the statement.

Murphy and Fair have previously disputed any claims that organizing the speaking event for the conservative power couple amounted to political bias, pointing to the fact that they also tried to bring Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to campus this fall.

The Alligator unearthed emails showing that Sanders’s non-campaign staff declined Murphy’s speaking invitation on Sept. 22, saying he was too busy. Sanders’s representatives asked if the presidential candidate could come to campus as part of a campaign event, but Murphy said no. He stressed that Trump Jr.'s appearance was on the agreement that it would not be a campaign speech.

“The only difference was Sen. Sanders’ non-campaign staff declined our invitation to speak in his official capacity,” Murphy wrote in an email to the Alligator. “Any attempt to try and separate one from the other with allegations of impropriety is deceptive and inflammatory.”

According to the student government constitution, a group of senators tasked with weighing impeachment must vote for Murphy’s ouster by two-thirds majority. If that occurs, he will be temporarily suspended as the case moves to a senate trial body, which must vote by three-fourths majority to convict and remove him from office.

Some conservative students voiced skepticism about the impeachment effort and defended Murphy’s actions. When the student senate broached the possibility of impeachment during a hearing last week, one student, Jared Rossi, said the impeachment was based on partisanship, and that senators were misleadingly “stuffing Ms. Wren’s words into Michael Murphy’s mouth,” the Alligator reported.

Jarrod Rodriguez, treasurer of UF’s College Republicans group, told the Times that he did not believe the emails between Wren and Murphy provided evidence of an impeachable offense.

“I’m not saying that it doesn’t raise any eyebrows,” he said, “but it also isn’t the nail in the coffin.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'd like to recruit junior to be prisoner of the week on cell block E: "Don Jr. is on a mission to recruit Trump culture warriors"

Spoiler

Donald Trump Jr. wasn’t freelancing when he came in swinging during his appearance last week on “The View,” accusing Joy Behar of wearing blackface and Whoopi Goldberg of excusing Roman Polanski’s alleged sexual assault of a minor.

It was a showcase for the well-rehearsed role he has been playing for internet-savvy culture warriors and on the campaign trail: translating the combative, anti-liberal MAGA ethos for nonboomers.

In appearances across college campuses and on a slate of podcasts, comedy shows and livestreamed shows popular with young, cynical Americans who might not like President Donald Trump much but loathe a specific type of culturally minded Trump critic even more, Trump Jr. has branded himself as their emissary to MAGA world.

And now Trump Jr. is taking his act to a wide audience with a best-selling book, “Triggered.” Featuring unvarnished, self-aware tales of his drinking problems, ditch-digging in Czechoslovakia and trying to win the approval of his distant father, the book caters to Americans who grew up listening to podcasts, watching amateur YouTube videos and reading overly confessional blogs from nontraditional journalists. When discussing the book in person, he uses “like” just as much as the 20-somethings who are listening to him.

It’s a role that could help the president come 2020, as he tries to cobble together a reelection victory on the back of a shrinking, mostly white voting bloc. If Trump Jr. can connect with just a few pockets of traditionally Democratic-leaning younger voters, exploit their skepticism of millennial wokeness and convert them into engaged culture warriors, it could go a long way toward helping the president in key swing states like Florida, Texas and Wisconsin — not by much, but by just enough. They don’t have to love Donald Trump; they just have to hate the left more.

“They can see a lot of the backlash that [Trump Jr.] receives every single day on social media and in media and so forth,” said Charlie Kirk, founder of the college conservative group Turning Point USA, who has appeared with Trump Jr. on numerous campuses. “And they themselves as young conservatives experience, on a smaller scale, other forms of backlash.”

To those in the know, Trump Jr. has been spreading this message for months.

He’s the beloved “New York meathead” on “The Kirk Minihane Show” podcast at Barstool Sports, a digital media company that writes less about sports and more about the increasingly reactionary things that certain millennial sports bros talk about between games. He gabs with Jim Norton and Sam Roberts, two comedians and radio personalities enmeshed in the wrestling and UFC worlds, impresses Adam Carolla with his knowledge of power saws, recaps legendary WWE matches with pro wrestler Chris Jericho, and kvetches about left wing #canceling with all of them. Through his fluency in internet manliness, Trump Jr. has tried to teach a younger generation how to fight the left, the Trump Jr. way: Punch hard, talk fast, protect dad at all costs and damn the consequences.

“When you see Don speak at a college, he doesn’t come across like a buttoned-up politician guy,” said one person close to Trump Jr. “It doesn’t come across like a phony news anchor. He comes across like a guy shooting the shit on a podcast.” A podcast that is now, incidentally, spreading pro-Trump content.

So, it was no surprise when Trump Jr. brought this persona to “The View.” Within 30 seconds of taking his seat, the hosts were grilling him on why he tweeted out the name of the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint about Trump’s approach to Ukraine. Prepared, Trump Jr. swiftly punched back with an accusation that the hosts’ network, ABC, was being hypocritical.

“Right now, ABC is chasing down a whistleblower about all of the [Jeffrey] Epstein stories that were killed,” he said, referring to a leaked video of an ABC anchor complaining that the network had prevented her from publishing a story about the convicted sex offender who committed suicide in a jail cell.

The rest of the interview continued in the same vein. Trump Jr. belittled his hosts over their past liberal misdeeds — alleged blackface, comments about film director Polanski — declaring that he was fighting back against the media on behalf of conservatives.

He likely knew exactly how his presence — and those comments — would come across on a show like “The View,” and the kind of culture-war content that would emerge as a result. That was the point.

“I mean, I could go on there, be the nicest guy in the world, use very measured and reasonable arguments and you know, that no matter what I said, [the headlines would be] ‘Don Jr. gets DESTROYED, they OWNED HIM,’” he told Minihane before his taping with “The View.” “It's literally a no-win for me, you know, in the social justice wars.”

By infuriating “The View” hosts, Trump Jr. may have opened himself up to condemnation from mainstream journalists, but created a work of #triggering performance theater in the process — one that was broadcast on network television, went viral among die-hard Trumpists, and, more importantly, landed on the radar of the increasingly young free speech crowd on the internet.

Trump Jr. later told comedian Dave Rubin on his eponymous YouTube show that in the days afterward, several male fans had come up to him during book signings and told him they’d loved his appearance on “The View,” though they stumbled when he asked what they were doing watching a show with a largely female demographic.

There are, of course, limits to this strategy. The fact that he is President Donald Trump’s son makes it hard to win converts among a deeply polarized age cohort. But winning over any number of nonboomer voters — or at least making them skeptical toward liberals — is critical. In 2018, 62.2 million people under the age of 53 turned out to vote in the midterms, according to the Pew Research Center, more than the 60.1 million voters above that age.

And the Trump Jr. roadshow has also exposed infighting among the president’s supporters.

Shortly after his appearance on “The View,” Trump Jr. went to a Turning Point event at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he happily took on what he thought was a group of liberal students screaming at him to take questions.

“Name a time when conservatives have disrupted even the furthest leftist on a college campus,” he said, on cue, as the students shrieked.

Yet the students apparently were conservatives — specifically, Trump-supporting “America First” nationalists who believed Turning Point is too pro-Israel, a stance at odds with their desire to turn America into an ethno-state.

Those nationalists then followed Trump Jr. as his book tour progressed. They flooded an appearance on a YouTube livestream with demands that he participate in a Q&A. “Why did you get triggered at UCLA?” one mocked him.

Even in MAGA world, it seems, being a culture warrior is increasingly difficult.

Still, that might not matter come 2020. By casting his advocacy as a sociological endeavor and not an overtly political one, Trump Jr. is, in a way, simply shifting the context of Trump’s reelection away from the issues — impeachment, trade deals, tax reform, climate change — and toward the soft realm of the culture war. Broadly speaking, that’s area in which Trump has thrived politically.

And tellingly, the last chapter of his book — after hundreds of pages chronicling his grievances with rich liberals, college students, socialist Twitter mobs and Jussie Smollett — is titled “Trump 2020.” The final passage includes 14 pages of actual bulleted talking points for his father’s reelection.

His father’s supporters, he wrote, were fed up with “living in a country that was ruled by what the left did and did not find offensive.” Trump Jr. is hoping that statement rings true with just enough young voters to keep his dad in the White House.

When I saw the picture in the article (Jerry Falwell Jr and Udvay), all I could think is they look like two of the douchiest douchecanoes wasting space on our planet.

 

 

[thoughtful]

On 11/13/2019 at 8:48 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Remember Udvay and his squeeze's ridiculous $50K speaking engagement at the University of Florida? Well, there's been some blow back: "University of Florida’s student president faces impeachment after bringing Donald Trump Jr. to campus for $50,000"

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[JMarie]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

 

"Triggered" is discounted at $17.98 on Amazon. assuming Books-A-Million offers a similar bestseller discount, $94,800 would buy 5,267 copies, with no sales tax. Who knows if similar payments were made to Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

[Smash!]

If this all isn't authoritarianism I don't know what it is [emoji20]

[JMarie]

95% of Amazon reviewers gave Triggered five stars.  Sure they did.

[GreyhoundFan]

10 hours ago, JMarie said:

95% of Amazon reviewers gave Triggered five stars.  Sure they did.

To paraphrase his slimy daddy: fake reviews.

[GreyhoundFan]

I wonder if their santa wears a gold suit.

[fraurosena]

38 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I wonder if their santa wears a gold suit.

Nah, their santa preferably goes shirtless, and is more likely to manfully ride a horse than a reindeer.

[GreyhoundFan]

I so despise Junior: "Donald Trump Jr. got approval to hunt an endangered sheep days after he killed it"

Spoiler

At nighttime in a remote region of western Mongolia, Donald Trump Jr. used a rifle with a laser sight to shoot and kill an endangered argali, the largest living species of sheep. Local hunting guides fanned the lights of their cellphones across the ground to search for where the creature fell. Trump Jr. asked them not to dismember the animal on the spot, but instead to carry it away on an aluminum sheet to keep its fur and horns intact.

ProPublica described the August excursion in a report that relies on records and interviews to allege that the president’s son received special treatment from the Mongolian government just weeks after U.S. and Mongolian officials met at the White House. The Trump administration has sought to strengthen ties with Mongolia, a longtime defense partner that lies between China and Russia, to prepare for Beijing’s growing global influence.

In Mongolia, permits to shoot and kill an argali, which are prized for their tusks and meat, are determined largely by politics, connections and money, experts told ProPublica. Trump Jr. received a permit after his hunt — which ProPublica reported is a rare occurrence.

Amgalanbaatar Sukh, a scientist who heads an argali research center in Mongolia, told ProPublica that high-level government contacts often determine who gets hunting permits in ways that are opaque to almost everyone else. The government authorized 86 permits to be issued in this year’s hunting season, which runs from July 1 to Sept. 30, ProPublica reported.

Trump Jr. also met privately with the Mongolian president, Khaltmaagiin Battulga, during the trip he took with his son, according to ProPublica. Andy Surabian, a spokesman for Trump Jr., did not answer a question about what the pair discussed.

Surabian said in a statement that Trump Jr. bought the trip to Mongolia at a National Rifle Association auction in 2015, before his father announced his candidacy for president. Trump Jr. used his own money to pay for the trip, flew commercial and got the required permits through a third-party outfitter, Surabian said. He said neither U.S. nor Mongolian officials helped to organize Trump Jr.’s trip.

Jandos Kontorbai Ahat, a member of the Mongolian president’s political party, arranged the hunting trip, ProPublica reported. He told the news organization that the trophy-hunting system in Mongolia is “very political.”

Ahat said the defense attache at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia accompanied Trump Jr. and the other hunters. Hunting guides and scouts told ProPublica that Trump Jr. was also joined by five American men they described as bodyguards. Surabian said the Secret Service, not Trump Jr., determines what security protocols are necessary.

Trump Jr. documented his trip in Instagram posts, which showed him standing in front of a traditional Mongolian yurt, posing on a horse and handling a live eagle. Ahat told ProPublica that Trump Jr. was “an upstanding person” who treated others with respect. The local guides said Trump Jr.’s hunting skills impressed them.

Trump Jr. and his brother, Eric Trump, are avid big-game hunters who have killed animals on African safaris before. During their father’s presidential campaign, photos resurfaced of the two posing with an elephant, a buffalo and a leopard that they had killed on a safari.

In February, a hunting advocacy and lobbying website raffled off a five-day elk hunt in Utah with Trump Jr.

I have several friends who hunt. They mostly hunt deer, which are suffering from overpopulation in my area. They smoke the meat and live on it for a good part of the year. Even though I couldn't do it, I have no problem with this as they are using the animal for sustenance, not as a trophy. Junior and Eric just hunt to feel more manly. Killing innocent creatures should not be part of their dick measuring contests.

[JMarie]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lara-trump-donald-trump-animal-cruelty-backfires_n_5df22044e4b06a50a2ead17b

(trigger warning: reimagines Trump as a superhero)

[GreyhoundFan]

There's always a tweet, Junior edition:

[Flossie]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

There's always a tweet, Junior edition:

Junior:  Are you saying that it's deplorable that Bill Clinton was impeached?

Or do you mean that it's deplorable that your father was impeached?

Or that we should send both of them a fruit basket in an act of consolation?  I'm on it.  Bill will get a standard basket.  Your father will get some rotted fruit.  He won't notice anyway because he doesn't eat fresh food.

I'll send Hillary the biggest basket I can find, complete with balloons, chocolates, and heartfelt wishes that she understand I know she was robbed of her victory.

[Howl]

Ooopsie: The FBI has obtained wiretaps of a Putin ally tied to the NRA who met with Trump Jr. during the campaign

<snip> 

Quote

When Grinda was asked whether he was concerned about Torshin's interactions with Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied, "Mr. Trump's son should be concerned."

Who is Grinda? 

Quote

José Grinda, who has led investigations by the Spanish government into organized crime in the country, said this week that the FBI had in recent months requested and received transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a former Russian banker with connections to the mob who has been convicted of money laundering.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Junior's squeeze seems to be checking out another scum:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wish trophy hunting and fishing was illegal everywhere:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

You couldn't make this up:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Donald Trump Jr.’s ‘Triggered’ reads like a campaign book for 2024"

Quote

Donald Trump Jr.’s best-selling new book, “Triggered,” fails as memoir and as polemic: Its analysis is facile, its hypocrisy relentless, its self-awareness marginal. (The writing is wretched, even by the standards of political vanity projects.) But the point of “Triggered” is not autobiographical, literary or analytic, and it should not be read or evaluated on such grounds. Rather, the book is most useful as a preview of a possible Donald Trump Jr. 2024 presidential campaign, the contours of which grow clearer the deeper one wades into these pages.

“There’s been a fair amount of speculation as to where my own political career might take me,” Don Jr. notes with satisfaction. This book provides an answer, presenting its author as the natural heir to the MAGA movement: a troller of lefties, warrior of culture and self-described “s--- -talker par excellence.” Just like Dad! Yet Don Jr. also attempts to establish some differences, even if stylistic. His positions on immigration are no less hard-line than his father’s, for instance, yet he invokes his own immigrant roots and friendships with immigrants — legal ones, of course, the good ones — to soften the edges. And more important, Don Jr. portrays himself as an authentic representative of the aggrieved heartland, in some ways more so than his father. He dedicates his book to “the deplorables,” saluting the patriotism and values of the everyman Trump supporter. “I am proudly one of you,” he writes. And he almost seems to believe it.

Throughout “Triggered,” Don Jr. claims both his political and familial inheritance. “From the moment the nurses at New York Hospital inked the name ‘Donald John Trump Jr.’ onto my birth certificate,” he writes, “you might say I’ve been following in the footsteps of my father.” He claims to share his father’s “killer instinct” and writes that speaking bluntly is “just one of those things that got passed down in the genes!” The connection is not just genetic but mystical: “The energy that flows through my father is the same energy that flowed through my grandfather and great-grandfather before him. . . . The same energy also flows through me.” At times, he even seems to conflate the two Donald Trumps: “I fight back,” Don Jr. writes. “That’s what we do.”

So when he brags about receiving so many death threats (“second only to my father”), Don Jr.’s message to the base is clear: The left hates me nearly as much as they hate my dad, so you should love me nearly as much as you love him.

There are clear parallels between Don Jr.’s “Triggered” and his father’s “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” both of which were published when the authors were 41. Don Jr: “We would arrive early in the morning as the crews were setting up, and I would walk with my dad while he inspected the concrete foundations and metal stairways.” Trump Sr.: “I remember very well as a kid, accompanying my father to inspect buildings. . . . We’d spend hours in the building, checking every refrigerator and sink, looking over the boiler and the roof and the lobby.” The son also lingers on his various construction projects and real estate deals and how they were completed “on time and under budget,” another standard Trumpism.

The latest book is also littered with familiar Trump put-downs, talking points, omissions and pats on the back. “Crooked Hillary” and “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” make cameos. Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is derided as “FullofSchiff.” Robert Mueller is an “old, over-the-hill puppet,” although Don Jr. still invokes Mueller’s investigation to contend that there was “no collusion” with Russia and “no obstruction” of justice (even though Mueller’s report, particularly on obstruction, was hardly so definitive). Don Jr. insists that his father’s opposition to Barack Obama was about policy and not race, making no mention of how Trump built his political brand on the lie of birtherism. And he trashes the news media — only his father’s Twitter feed and his own provide the “unfiltered truth,” he asserts — yet is quick to point out news stories discussing his political potential and popularity with conservative audiences. He dismisses a recent Atlantic cover story story about his rivalry with his sister Ivanka Trump as “mostly false,” then proceeds to quote portions he finds personally flattering.

Don Jr. also displays his father’s eagerness to stoke culture wars and deploy wedge issues, devoting entire chapters to the fake 2019 attack on actor Jussie Smollett and to transgender athletes “smashing women’s hard-earned records” in weightlifting and track and field. Don Jr. appears obsessed with questions of gender identity — he says the ultimate Democratic presidential candidate would be “a nonbinary minority who identifies as a dolphin” — and never ceases to trumpet his supposed good looks (“hey, I’m a Trump”) and his tenacious heterosexuality. Don Jr. and his wife, Vanessa Trump, divorced in 2018, and in his book he constantly brings up his new relationship with former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle.

A fixation on masculinity is at the core of Don Jr.’s efforts to appeal to his father’s base. He recounts the summers he spent as a child in his mother’s native Czechoslovakia, where his maternal grandfather showed him how to shoot a bow, start a fire, swing an ax and throw a knife — “all that guy stuff,” he explains. (“I butchered hundreds of chickens in my childhood,” he boasts.) Don Jr. looks back on his years at an elite boarding school in rural Pennsylvania and his time at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to prove his Rust Belt bona fides, and cites his sojourn hunting and fishing in the Rockies after college as proof of his regular-guyness. “Out in the woods, no one knew I was Donald Trump’s son, and I don’t think anyone would have cared if they did know,” he writes.

Like so many second-generation dynastic hopefuls, Don Jr. attempts to be his father and his own man as well. For all his efforts to seize the Trump legacy — by my count, the phrases “my father” and “my dad” appear 299 times in this 294-page book — Don Jr. also wants to establish distance from the Trump glitz. “I didn’t take to the opulent lifestyle the way some children of billionaires do,” he writes. Don Jr. stresses that he got along well with the former New York City cops who provided security at Trump Tower (“I’m still friendly and go shooting with a few of them”) and that some of his early relationships were with the chefs who worked for his parents. He means to highlight his relatability, but the anecdote also underscores his childhood isolation. It is, inadvertently, one of the most revealing moments in “Triggered.”

Yet it is such connections that inform Don Jr.’s political self-image. While his father may appeal to the struggling working-class voter, the 2016 campaign convinced Don Jr. that he is the working-class voter. “I was able to talk to people who came to events in a way that other surrogates, even candidates, couldn’t,” he writes. “I had spent most of my youth out in the Rust Belt. In a very real sense, these were my people. Unlike many New York City socialites, I didn’t have to try to connect with them. I was one of them.” The reference to “New York City socialites” could be a dig at Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, and their own longings of succession. While Ivanka and Jared played the inside game, landing favored White House positions, Don Jr. went outside, playing to Fox News and the base. Rather than try to influence Dad, he sought to emulate him.

Don Jr.’s generic tales of Rust Belt affinity feel awfully pat at times. He describes a campaign encounter with a Midwestern carpenter who backed Trump but felt torn by his family’s longtime Democratic allegiances. Don Jr. gives him the pseudonym “Rusty” and convinces him that today’s socialist, amnesty-loving Democrats are not like those of old. He meets an Ethiopian immigrant at a Colorado coffee shop who tells him that she voted for Trump because of his immigration policies. “Your father’s right,” she whispered. “People who think they can just come into America and get whatever they want makes it so much harder for people like me.” And shortly after Trump called for a shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, a livery cab driver whom Don Jr. describes as “Middle Eastern” told him he agreed. “I’ve heard your father’s comments. I think he’s one hundred percent right. I know it’s the ones who are preaching hate, oppressing women, killing people who ruin it for us all.”

How convenient to always run into suitably representative strangers eager to affirm your worldview in perfectly quotable sentences, and to have the presence of mind to take verbatim notes!

Don Jr. looks back on his Republican National Convention speech as “the spark that lit the fire of my political life.” Reading through “Triggered,” it’s easy to find elements of future stump speeches. Like every politician, he speaks of his “enduring” love for the United States and how he’s fighting for “my children and yours.” He emphasizes that some Democrats are “good people” who even voted for his father but that party leaders have veered toward socialism. He draws on his childhood visits to communist-era Czechoslovakia to inform his disdain for state planning, a line of attack one can imagine Don Jr. using in a future race to assail the progressive Democratic wing. While defending the Trump administration’s border policies — he describes today’s migrants as an “invasion” — Don Jr. highlights his own immigrant background. “I come from a family of immigrants,” he writes, noting his Czech mother, Scottish grandmother and German great-grandfather. “I have many good friends who are immigrants, and I have met thousands of immigrants who contribute financially, socially, and educationally to this great nation. That’s just not the case with far too many illegal immigrants.”

And, of course, there is the frontiersman persona, which Don Jr. pushes so hard. Among the book’s many photographs are images of the author fishing, scuba diving, hunting and hiking. “Trekking down a mountain in the Yukon Territory of Canada with a caribou rack,” reads one of the photo captions. “It took several trips to retrieve all the meat.”

There’s plenty of meat in “Triggered,” and all of it is red. Here, the outdoors are not a place for reflection or introspection. Donald Trump Jr. went to the woods because he wished to troll deliberately. In his introduction, he summarizes his political project — and any future campaign — in one line: “Anything that makes the veins in a few liberal foreheads bulge out is fine by me.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Jack Ohman:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is disgusting: