This is a story of the prizes and the prices of fame.
At 8:00 Wednesday morning, September 20th, Donald Trump Jr’s X account proclaimed, “I’m sad to announce, my father Donald Trump has passed away. I will be running for president in 2024.”
Then the account burped out a Tweet about Joe Biden complete with a racial slur followed by this to Elon Musk: “my dad owns u @elonmusk bum.”
But within an hour the account had been fixed, the offending tweets had been erased, and Don Jr’s account was back to normal.
The hack was a minor annoyance. Like a mosquito bite. It was one of the hazards of fame.
When you base your career on attracting attention, some of that attention will be negative. And the hacker was right. After Donald Trump senior leaves the scene, Don Jr has been positioned to run for president.
Don Jr. is already the second biggest draw for paying ticket holders in the Trump family, second only to his father. When organizations like the Tennessee Firearms Association Legislative Action Committee want to pull crowds to their events and make headlines, they hire Don Jr. At up to $100 thousand dollars per speech.
If you are a MAGA Republican, Don Jr is your hero. He’s had the “courage” to write books like Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden And The Democrats’ Defense Of The Indefensible and Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.
Two days after the 2020 election, when Don Jr. sensed that his dad was losing the vote count, he texted his father’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows on how to pull off a coup. He said, “It’s very simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all. .. POTUS must start second term now. We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress.”
But this wasn’t Don Jr’s first foray into illegal politics. Way back in 2016, when the Russians and the Saudis offered illegal help to his father in the election, Don Jr was their contact person. When the Russians created misinformation, Don Jr sometimes retweeted it.
And when WikiLeaks wanted to torpedo Hillary Clinton by stealing her emails, Don Jr was the person in touch with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange.
Then in 2020 when the election was declared for Joe Biden, Don Jr helped bring the crowds to Washington for the January 6th uprising. And like his dad, Don Jr tweeted that it would be “wild”. Meaning that any violence you cared to inflict would be welcomed.
Why did Don Jr try to help steal an election? In part because for four years the White House was part of the Trump Organization. Jared and Ivanka Trump made $640 million during their four years in the White House and two billion dollars more from the Saudis just after they left.
Ivanka Trump was given 28 trademarks in China and Japan while she was in office. Trademarks worth at least $160 million. Including trademarks on, ironically, voting machines.
And Don Jr and his brother Eric presided over existing deals with 28 other countries. Deals that became more lucrative because their dad was in the White House.
Deals through which foreign leaders like Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan could funnel money in exchange for influence. Erdogan bought himself enough influence that when he asked Donald Trump to withdraw American troops from a war we were winning against ISIS in Syria, Trump complied, thus leaving the Middle East to Russia.
The bottom line is that Don Jr is worth $300 million, has made more than $30 million in salary from the Trump Organization, and makes his millions today in part from the celebrity status his dad has given him.
But the ultimate comment on Don Jr’s situation comes from Don Jr himself, “When you’re the father and your son’s entire career is dependent on that, they own you.”
References:
https://www.the-sun.com/news/9135731/donald-trump-jr-social-media-hacked-strange-post/
https://www.gobankingrates.com/net-worth/business-people/donald-trump-jr-net-worth/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66869455
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/jared-and-ivanka-made-up-to-640-million-in-the-white-house/
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/trump-made-up-to-160-million-from-foreign-countries-as-president/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/trump-foreign-business-interests/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Jr
Barbara Res, Tower of Lied, Los Angeles: Graymalkin Media, 2020
Craig Unger, House of Trump, House of Putin, Dutton, 2018
Michael Cohen, Disloyal, Skyhorse, 2020
Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: : Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency, Penguin, 2017
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Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. One of his seven books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. He does news commentary at 1:06 am Eastern Time every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on Coast to Coast AM. For more, see http://howardbloom.institute.