There are plenty of people who would find it extremely difficult to muster up any pity for Donald Trump Jr., the eldest child of the president. Still, the GQ profile of Junior published Thursday makes a pretty compelling case — from his birth through his engagement through the end of his marriage. "Maybe he's not an intellectual, but he tried to be useful for his family," was how one insider gently put it. "I feel bad for him, honestly."
Here are four of the most depressing details in the profile, which you can read in full here. Jeva Lange
The Week
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That evening he was born, little Don was left by his parents to the care of the hospital's nursery. His father headed home to celebrate New Year's Eve, while Ivana put a boa and a mink over her hospital gown and went to visit a girlfriend recovering from back surgery on another floor of the hospital. [GQ]
His father didn't want to give him his name.
“You can't do that!" Trump is quoted as saying in Ivana's memoir, Raising Trump. "What if he's a loser?" [GQ]
When his parents were getting divorced, they had a spat over who had to raise him.
... [Donald] Trump, looking for some leverage by announcing that he was going to keep Don and raise him alone.
"Okay, keep him," Ivana said she told him. "I have two other kids to raise."
A few minutes later — his bluff out-bluffed — Trump ordered his boy to be taken back upstairs. [GQ]
He had the most unromantic engagement ever to Vanessa Haydon.
Despite his father's hand in their coupling, Don earned a scolding from his dad over the way he proposed — a Trumpian publicity stunt in which he scored a free engagement ring by popping the question in a jewelry store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey. [GQ]
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