Donald Trump Jr.

Submission 37,195

Part of a series on Donald Trump. [View Related Entries]

About

Donald Trump Jr. is the oldest son of President Donald Trump. He works as a trustee and executive director of a trust controlling The Trump Organization while his father serves his presidency. He has been a prominent figure in the Russiagate scandal, particularly when it was revealed he met with Russian agents to receive damaging information on Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States Presidential Election.

History

Donald Trump Jr. was born December 31st, 1977, to Donald Trump's first wife, Ivana.^[1] He is the oldest of the Trump children. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and gained a B.S. degree in economics. Shortly after graduating college, he joined the Trump Organization. He also appeared as a guest adviser and judge on The Apprentice for a decade. During his father's presidential campaign, he, Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump all played large roles, with each of them speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Russiagate Involvement

On July 8th, 2017, The New York Times reported that on June 9th, 2016, key members of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, including Donald Trump, Jr., then-campaign head Paul Manafort and Trump Sr.'s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a high-level Russian lawyer with deep ties to the Kremlin at Trump Tower. The purpose of the meeting was the exchange of incriminating information regarding Hillary Clinton. The story contradicted statements made by Trump Jr. in March 2017, when he said:

“Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form."

The next day, Trump Jr. tweeted from his Twitter account "Media & Dems are extremely invested in the Russia story. If this nonsense meeting is all they have after a yr, I understand the desperation!" The tweet (shown below) received more than 9,700 retweets and 27,300 likes in less than 12 hours.

Mere hours after posting that tweet, and just as The New York Times prepared to publish a report that alleged that Trump Jr. was aware that the purpose of the meeting was to obtain incriminating information on Clinton, Trump Jr posted a series of emails, confirming the correspondence between him and former tabloid reporter and entertainment manager Robert Goldstone. The Trump family had met Goldstone as a judge for the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant. Goldstone also manages Azerbaijani popstar Emin Agalarov, who Goldstone claims asked him to facilitate the meeting with Trump Sr., who has appeared in music videos with the singer.

Ahead of the emails (shown below), Trump Jr. wrote a personal statement explaining his intentions. He said:

To everyone, in order to be totally transparent, I am releasing the entire email chain of my emails with Rob Goldstone about the meeting on June 9, 2016. The first email, on June 3, 2016 was from Rob, who was relating a request from Emin, a person I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant near Moscow. Emin and his father have a very highly respected company in Moscow. The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton I thought was Political Opposition Research. I first wanted to just have a phone call but when that didn’t work out they said the woman would be in New York and asked if I would meet. I decided to take the meeting. The woman, as she has said publicly, was not a government official. And, as we have said, they had no information to provide and wanted to talk about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act. To put this in context, this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue. As Rob Goldstone said just today in the press, the entire meeting was “the most inane nonsense I ever heard. And I was actually agitated by it.”

In the fourth email page, Goldstone offers to provide incriminating information about Clinton's "dealings with Russia" and claims it is a sign of "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

In the email (shown below), Goldstone says:

"Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting. The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for the Mr. Trump."

Within 17 minutes, Trump Jr. responded:

If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer.

On November 6th, Bloomberg^[2] reported that the lawyer Trump Jr. met with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, would be willing to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Robert Mueller about her meeting with Trump Jr. Notably, she said she attended New York meeting to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes. In exchange for that information, she attempted to lobby against the Magnitsky law which punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.

Wikileaks Connection

On November 13th, 2017, The Atlantic^[5] reported that Donald Trump Jr. was approached by Wikileaks via Twitter Direct Messages on September 20th, 2016 and continued correspondence with him through July of 2017. Wikileaks suggested to Trump Jr. that then-candidate and future President Donald Trump release his tax returns to Wikileaks, contest the election results as "rigged," and offer to name Julian Assange as ambassador to Australia. Donald Trump Jr. responded to early inquiries from Wikileaks, who first notified him of an Anti-Trump Super PAC.

While the article mentions that Donald Trump Jr. did not keep frequent contact with Wikileaks, circumstantial evidence suggests he was paying attention to the information Wikileaks was giving him. For example, on October 12th, 2016, the same day Wikileaks released a series of Podesta Emails and suggested candidate-Trump tweet about Wikileaks with the link wlsearch.tk, which would help his followers track the communications in the Clinton campaign.. Though Trump did not tweet the link, that day, he did tweet "“Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”^[6] fifteen minutes after Trump Jr. received the message, suggesting Trump Jr. may have talked to his father about his correspondence with Wikileaks. This was pointed out by Wall Street Journalist @ByronTau^[7] the day The Atlantic's piece was released.

The communications were part of a large cache of documents Trump Jr.'s lawyers handed to congressional investigators and were obtained by The Atlantic. The same day as The Atlantic article, Donald Trump Jr.^[8] tweeted screenshots of his DM conversations with Wikileaks, saying "Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic!"

Divorce

On March 15th, 2018, Vanessa Haydon Trump, wife of Donald Trump Jr., filed for an uncontested divorce in a Manhattan court.^[13] The couple had been together for 12 years and had five children together. The day before the filing was made official, the New York Post's gossip column Page Six^[14] reported the couple was headed that way. They reported that their issues stemmed in part from Donald Trump Jr.'s Twitter activity in the past year that "worried" friends, particularly when he liked a tweet linking anti-depressants to mass murder.

Online, conversation about the divorce was initially lead by Twitter users enjoying schadenfreude at Trump Jr.'s expense. However, the conversation shifted to whether it was ethical to could take pleasure in Trump Jr.'s misfortune after reporter Sam Stein tweeted "Really weird and upsetting to see folks acting gleeful at the Don Jr. divorce news. It’s his private life and he has five kids. Leave it alone," gaining over 2,400 retweets and 24,000 likes (shown below).

This led to a slew of tweets discussing the ethics of enjoying a political opponent's personal misfortune. Many argued that because of what they see as various ills the Trump family has inflicted on this country, they are justified in feeling happiness at Trump Jr.'s misfortune. Twitter user @BrandyLJensen tweeted, "sorry but if you’re an absolutely repellent human being who makes the world worse I’m gonna laugh when your wife leaves you and celebrate when you die," gaining over 410 retweets and 3,700 likes (shown below, left). User and Chapo Trap House host Virgil Texas parodied Stein's original tweet, gaining over 240 retweets and 2,200 likes (shown below, right).

Aubrey O'Day Affair Allegation

On March 19th, 2018, Us Weekly^[15] reported that Trump Jr. had an affair with Aubrey O'Day, a former Celebrity Apprentice contestant and former member of pop music group Danity Kane. According to the magazine's sources, the affair lasted from the end of 2011 to March of 2012, and ended after Vanessa Trump found emails between the pair. After the news broke, internet commenters speculated that an old song by O'Day, a breakup track called "DJT," was almost certainly about the affair (shown below, left).^[16] Additionally, TMZ uncovered an old cover by O'Day of "Somebody That I Used to Know" with several lyrics tweaked to be about an affair, leading to speculation that the track was about the affair O'Day had with Trump Jr. (shown below, right).

Additionally, Twitter users were able to discover flirty tweets between the pair around the time period of the alleged affair (shown below).

Sad Donald Trump Jr. Photo

Sad Donald Trump Jr. refers to a photograph of Donald Trump Jr. sitting on a tree stump looking off camera from an article in the New York Times, which inspired a series of captioned tweets mocking the picture in late March 2017. On March 18th, 2017, The New York Times published an profile on Donald Trump Jr. titled "Donald Trump Jr. Is His Own Kind of Trump," which featured a photograph of President Donald Trump's oldest son sitting on a tree stump (shown below, left). That morning, Twitter user @JordanFreiman tweeted the photo along with other pictures of Trump Jr. sitting along with the quip "how is he so bad at sitting?" (shown below, right). Within 72 hours, the tweet gained over 91,700 likes and 29,900 retweets.

That day, other Twitter users reposted the New York Times photograph along with joke captions mocking Trump Jr. (shown below). Media outlets followed up on the meme including Yahoo! Entertainment^[3] and Esquire.^[4]

I Worked On This Story For a Year

Moments after Trump Jr.'s e-mail tweets, Jared Yates Sexton, an independent journalist who claimed to be working on the story, weighed in. In his comments about how long he had been working on the story, Sexton said, of his surprise, "I…worked on this story for a year…and…he just…he tweeted it out." The tweet (shown below) received more than 35,000 retweets and 113,000

Over the next 24 hours, people on Twitter began to parody the tweet, adding the phrase to pictures and tweets unconnected to the Trump email story (examples below),

Democracy Dies In Dankness

On February 1st, 2018, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a response to political journalist Andrea Mitchell in advance of the Nunes Memo saying "Apparently the press only likes their information 'leaked' from unverified sources rather than released openly from congress… I think it will be tough for them to sell their 'democracy dies in dankness' byline with this kind of logic."^[9] Trump Jr. was attempting to reference The Washington Post's slogan, Democracy Dies In Darkness, but misspelled "darkness" as "dankness."

The gaffe was covered by many media outlets, including Select All,^[10] Mashable^[11] and Huffington Post.^[12] Online, Twitter users joked about the typo by using the marijuana-related definition of dank. For example, user @SamAdlerBell uploaded a GIF of rapper Wiz Khalifa smoking blunts in response to the tweet (shown below, left). User @Jakebackpack uploaded a poem about the tweet (shown below, right).

Michael Avenatti Fight Challenge

On October 9th, 2018, NBC News media reporter Dylan Byers tweeted that Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti proposed a three-round mixed martial arts fight with Donald Trump Jr., with all proceeds going to charity (shown below, left). That day, Avenatti tweeted "I'm in" and that 50% of his portion of the proceeds would be directed to "rebuiling Puerto Rico" and 50% would go toward the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN (shown below, right).

"SNL" Gaffe

On January 31st, 2019, Donald Trump Jr. responded to Twitter user @JonathonWillow's criticism of the 2020 Democratic platform by writing "It’s almost like a funny version of an S&L skit" (shown below). Trump Jr. was referring to Saturday Night Live, which is commonly abbreviated as "SNL."

Twitter users were quick to mock Trump Jr.'s gaffe. Twitter user @MattBinder pointed it out and helped the gaffe spread, gaining over 48,000 retweets and 267,000 likes (shown below, left). Celebrities Andy Richter and Questlove both mocked Trump Jr. in the replies, gaining 215 and 57 retweets, respectively (shown below, right). The gaffe was covered by The Daily Dot.^[17]