Donald Trump Jr. has a very fishy reason for not deleting his 'assassination attempt' tweet

(Image credit: David Becker/Getty Images)

After Donald Trump was rushed off stage by Secret Service at a rally Saturday, rumors circulated that the commotion had been caused by a failed assassination attempt. Those rumors were swiftly proven false — but not before Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., came under fire for retweeting the misinformation.

"I took heat for tweeting about it when I'm sitting there not knowing what's going on — I'm following social media — and major and credible news organizations saying 'there was a gun. There was a gun.' I tweeted at the time," Trump Jr. explained on the Joyce Kaufman Show on Monday. "That was real time. They're saying I'm supposed to go back and erase things off my Twitter feed. I don't do that."

Donald Trump Jr. does happen to "do that," though. In at least one instance, Trump Jr. deleted a 2011 joke about sexually harassing women in October of this year:

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

The "assassination attempt" was ultimately determined to be an anti-Trump Republican man, who was trying to pull out a sign to wave at the rally.

Explore More

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.