Donald Trump Jr. has long lived under his father's considerable shadow — understandably so, given his namesake's legacy as a business tycoon, reality TV icon, and political figurehead. But as the elder Trump's third presidential campaign solidifies his MAGA movement's wholesale consumption of the Republican party, a man who had for years seemed, as GQ said in a 2018 profile, "contentedly inattentive to politics" has emerged as not only one of his father's biggest boosters and the ultra-conservative celebrity he's been for years but as a significant political power in his own right.
Where the former president's eldest daughter Ivanka, along with her husband Jared Kushner, were the dominant familial political force during her father's administration, Trump Jr.'s ascension through the Republican ranks in the intervening years has positioned him as both a gatekeeper and kingmaker in the upper echelons of conservative politics. While the name at the top of the GOP ticket this year is "Donald John Trump," it's Junior who is increasingly a locus of influence and authority moving forward.
'A MAGA bench for the future'
Trump Jr.'s most pointed political flex to date is arguably his successful push to add Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to the Trump ticket. While Vance is the obvious veepstakes winner, it's Trump Jr. who "won the behind-the-scenes fight for his father's ear," the Washington Examiner said. Trump Jr. has "spent years carving out his own place in the Republican movement," and his successful support for Vance suggests an "even greater role Trump Jr. could play in a second Trump presidency."
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The eldest Trump child is the "Republican party's next-generation kingmaker," said Financial Times. He not only works on "pushing alternative forms of media" such as the Rumble streaming platform favored by conservatives, but "also the next crop of Republican officials." It's a vocation he has embraced. "My biggest role is just making sure that we have an America First, a MAGA bench for the future," he said to The New York Times. As a "top confidant not only to the Republican presidential nominee but also the vice-presidential nominee," Trump Jr. is a "political force to be reckoned with in his own right," the Times said, citing a network in which "his former chief of staff is running the main pro-Trump super PAC. His longtime political consigliere has played a similar role for Mr. Vance. And his business partner in a publishing company is running a second pro-Trump super PAC."
The Vance episode in particular is "one of a series of signs of Trump Jr.'s rising influence within his father's political orbit," NBC News said, with one person close to Junior telling the network that "once we get into the fall, he'll be on the road nonstop."
"There are two endorsements that every candidate wants," said GOP strategist Alex Bruesewitz to Axios. "No. 1 is they want President Trump, and No. 2 is they want Donald Trump Jr."
'I want a veto power'
For his part, Trump Jr. sees his role for a potential second Trump administration as less about placing the right people in positions of authority so much as it is about keeping the wrong ones out. "I don't want to pick a single person for a position of power," said Trump Jr. in an interview with Axios' Mike Allen during the Republican National Committee. "All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster."
"I just want to block the bad actors. I just want to be a block. That's it," Trump said. "You guys pick the guy, that's right. I want a veto power to cut out each and every one of those people."
As for his political future beyond his father's potential administration, when asked in January about a run for office of his own, Trump Jr. said "I'm not going to say no, because if you do, they say 'liar!'"
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