Donald Trump Jr. didn’t know what to do with his life until his father improbably became president. Since then, he’s been a nuisance: delivering unhinged, red-eyed rants at the RNC; recording bizarre, slurry late night hotel monologues; texting someone else to get his own dad to call off the Capitol riot he helped foment. And at least one longtime Republican has finally had enough.
Peter Wehner, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and both President Bushes, penned a lengthy takedown in The Atlantic that tries to torch Trump’s oldest son once and for all. “Donald Trump Jr. is both intensely unappealing and uninteresting,” the piece begins, and it doesn’t get more glowing from there:
He combines in his person corruption, ineptitude, and banality. He is perpetually aggrieved; obsessed with trolling the left; a crude, one-dimensional figure who has done a remarkably good job of keeping from public view any redeeming qualities he might have.
What inspired Wehner to go on the attack now, nearly a year since his father left office in disgrace. It was Jr.’s appearance at a recent Turning Point USA soiree. “We’ve turned the other cheek and I understand sort of the biblical reference, I understand the mentality but it’s gotten us nothing. OK?” Jr. railed. “It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution.”
For Wehner, Don Jr. openly trashing one of the Bible’s greatest credos was a bridge too far. Don Jr., he wrote, “has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers.”
Wehner also decried Jr.’s us-vs.-them mentality:
“Throughout his speech Don Jr. painted a scenario in which Trump supporters—Americans living in red America—are under relentless attack from a wicked and brutal enemy. He portrayed it as an existential battle between good and evil. One side must prevail; the other must be crushed. This in turn justifies any necessary means to win.”
Of course, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree:
“He believes, as his father does, that politics should be practiced ruthlessly, mercilessly, and vengefully. The ends justify the means. Norms and guardrails need to be smashed. Morality and lawfulness must always be subordinated to the pursuit of power and self-interest. That is the Trumpian ethic.”
Wehner also reminded people that, despite Trump Sr.’s legal and financial woes — despite the fact that he’s a failed blogger who rants about nonsense to strangers at weddings — he’s still the de facto head of today’s Republican party:
“I understand that many Americans, including some number of Republicans I know, would rather we move on from the Trump family. But the Trump family and MAGA world won’t let us. And they’re playing for keeps.”
You can read the whole piece at The Atlantic. Then again, Trump is right about one thing: His base should get the vaccine so they don’t die.