Pity Don Junior

Pity Don Junior

Supposedly, Donald Trump Jr. has now come to terms with the Senate Intelligence Committee. I feel bad for poor Don. My wife and I had the opportunity five years ago to be seated at an AON client event at the same table as Don Jr. My wife is the least likely person in the world to forgive and forget someone who prides themselves in photos taken of them out engaging in big game hunting as Don Jr. and his little brother Eric have done. And yet, she says she found him courtly and pleasant at that dinner. And then there are the stories of him being railed at in front of his friends by his father for not being appropriately well dressed during college. Poor Don Junior, it must be tough.

Beaten children beat their children. They are not to blame if they have been so badly damaged by the wounds of youth that they are corrupted to act as they have been taught to act. And now it is being said by Michael Cohen that Trump’s personal lawyers (led by that nice Mr. Jay Sekulow) we’re engaged directly and specifically in crafting the lies that Cohen told Congress and that have him incarcerated in upstate New York. So what are the chances that Daddy Trump just let Don Junior go off to his prior Congressional testimony without the benefit of the good coaching available from Sekulow et. al.? Don Junior can’t be blamed for doing what Daddy says. He is a good boy after all.

Look, when the family friend Rob Goldstone emailed Don Junior about a big meeting with Russians about dirt from the Russians on Hilary Clinton, he did exactly what he was supposed to do. He told everyone about the meeting from Jared to Manafort to Dad (Dad would have been pissed if he hadn’t been told, right?). No one told him he was supposed to tell the FBI about any of that, so he wasn’t to blame for that. Then, when it all came out that he had taken that meeting, he did exactly what he should have as a totally innocent man. He gave up all the emails that proved it was a total nothing-burger meeting. Well, Dad must not have liked that much since he helped Junior out by drafting a full explanation for Don Junior to issue to the press explaining what had transpired in the meeting that he hadn’t heard of and knew nothing about before, during or after. That was nice of Dad, helping out Junior and all.

Dad says Don Junior is a hard-working guy who’s doing a great job running the family business while Dad’s busy in DC. Dad feels that the nasty Congress (strangely enough, a Republican-controlled Committee) should just leave Don Junior alone to do his (meaning Don Junior’s, of course) important work. Don Junior never wanted anything to do with Washington and shouldn’t get tangled in the den of vipers there. Better for him to play in the kinder, gentler sandbox of New York developers.

Dad is busy providing total transparency to Congress like no other president before him has ever allowed. He’s also busy suing his bankers and accountants for being forced to comply with Congressional subpoenas to provide his financial information to Congress’ prying eyes. His lawyers had to defend their legal position in court and were cornered by some nasty judge into saying that maybe the whole Watergate thing got off-track and Congress wasn’t justified in its requests for information then. It’s tough being a good and transparent president at times.

Back to Don Junior. So, what’s up with this New York State Attorney General? She is totally fixated on everything from the great Trump Foundation to The Trump Organization, to that old chestnut Trump Mortgage, to almost anything and everything that Don Junior has ever laid his hands on. After all, he worked hard at prep school and college, even attending dear old Dad’s alma mater. Other than that year ski bumming in Aspen after college, Don Junior had worked hard building The Trump Organization in the profitable and ethical manner that his Dad would expect of him (and you can’t really count that mortgage misstep since everyone had those problems in 2008). Why was that all not worthy of some respect?

For all these reasons, I think we all need to say a prayer for Don Junior. He’s had a tough row to hoe from the start. Think about it, he looks more like his Mom than his Dad. Dad left when he was 13 and just about to need a good male influence. Boarding school and college were all decided for him. Dad repossessed the van he was living in in Aspen. And by the time he got back, Ivanka was already Dad’s favorite, with his hand on her ass. On The Apprentice, he was always given the losing teams to advise (you think that was an accident?). And all the cool projects like that one in Azerbaijan were given to Ivanka. And then along comes Jared and Dad definitely likes him better than Don Junior, even though he is Jewish. It hasn’t been easy for Don Junior.

It’s not like he can make his own decisions and be his own man. How is he suppose to start that now at age forty-two? No, Don Junior is destined to follow in Dad’s footsteps. He will get a pardon when things get dicey. Then he will run for president in 2024 when Dad says to. It’s a hard life and we all need to pity poor Don Junior.