Trump Boys Eric and Don Jr. Want to Run Second-Term “Loyalty” Vetting for Their Dad: Report

Donald Trump’s first term in office represented a terrifying four years that millions of people would like to forget. Yet despite how bad it was, it’s important to remember that it could have been even worse—and one of the reasons it wasn’t was because some people in the administration actually stood up to Trump’s worst impulses. (See: the aides who reportedly told him the government couldn’t shoot unarmed migrants, the vice president who wouldn’t block the results of the election, etc.) Unfortunately, Team Trump knows this and won’t make the same mistake the second time around. According to a new report, two people very close to home are making it their jobs to ensure a willingness to do whatever Trump wants will be prioritized above all else.

Axios reports that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump “have become key players in the early planning for a second Trump administration’s transition team, and would focus on vetting potential officials and staffers for ideology and loyalty,” according to campaign aides and Trump allies. While neither one of the Trump boys would officially head up the transition team, they would “take a lead in making sure government jobs are filled by Republicans aligned with Trump’s vision for the party,” the sources told Axios, with one noting that Don Jr.’s goal “is to keep the John Boltons of the world outside a second Trump administration.” (John Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser; among other things, Bolton was said to have pushed back on Trump’s scrapped plan to invite the Taliban to Camp David, and, according to former aide Fiona Hill, wanted nothing to do with what he dubbed the Trump administration’s “drug deal” to pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. He later wrote a book trashing Trump and has suggested that his former boss is a Vladimir Putin–loving moron who thought Finland was part of Russia.)

In an interview with the New York Post last month, Don Jr.—who, like his brother and dad, was recently found liable for fraud—said he would be “very active” in the transition team’s dealings, saying, with uniquely Trumpian vernacular, that he’ll “make sure we stop some of the DC swamp rats and the swamp creatures from getting in there and doing their thing.” He added that he has a “good understanding of who would be great and loyal and implement the America First policies.”

It’s not clear what tests Junior and Eric would use to vet candidates for loyalty to their father, but it seems there’s a nonzero chance it would involve repeatedly shooting them with Nerf guns while making them comment “Biden sucks” under every White House social media post from the past three months.

Trump’s eldest sons are not the only ones taking an active role in his political future; in March, Lara Trump took over as cochair of the Republican National Committee and laid off dozens of people in what appears to be an obvious effort to install even more Trump loyalists. Two people who, at present, are staying as far away from the campaign as possible and more or less trying to pretend that the period from 2017 to 2021 never happened? Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the latter of whom announced, on the day her father kicked off his third run for the White House, that she would not be “involved in politics,” and whose frequent social media postings are notably Trump-free.

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