Donald Trump Jr. has revealed the outsize role he wants to play if his father is elected president again in November.
The former president’s 46-year-old son has been one of his father’s biggest supporters, campaigning intensively for the Republican candidate’s second term, but has never played an official government role.
Trump Jr. said Tuesday he doesn’t plan to change that if his father wins a second term, but he wants more unofficial status within his father’s agenda.
“I want to veto the RINOs. I want to have veto power over the RINOs. That’s all I’m asking for,” he said.
RINO is an acronym for Republican in Name Only: politicians considered insufficiently conservative.
Donald Trump Jr. revealed his plans if his father is elected president again in November
In the past, former President Trump has used the RINO moniker to describe everyone from Ron DeSantis to former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to Rupert Murdoch. He also used it to refer to most of his opponents in the 2024 Republican primaries.
In addition to eliminating RINOs, he himself appears to be a way to get pro-Trump people into the administration.
“The only role I want to play is to put our people in other positions of power. I just want to stop the bad guys from getting into those positions. That’s all I want.”
Someone Trump Jr. has vetted for RINO status is his ally and current vice presidential nominee, JD Vance.
The former president’s son believes the Ohio senator may be the right person to pass on his father’s legacy to the next generation.
“I think he’s someone who really believes in that mission; he’s not a neoconservative warmonger from Washington DC, and I think that’s very important,” he told Fox News.
“I love having a young, articulate, energetic guy who can help keep this movement going for future generations. I think that’s critical and very important,” Trump Jr. added.
He also loves how Vance fights back against what he calls a “hostile media.”
Someone Trump Jr. has no desire to call a RINO is his ally and now vice presidential candidate JD Vance (pictured, bottom right).
The former president’s son believes the Ohio senator may be the right person to carry on his father’s legacy to the next generation.
“I think he’s critical to the movement moving forward and I think he’ll do a great job as vice president.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump Jr. revealed the “tough time” when he didn’t know his father’s health status after he was shot by a would-be assassin, and the lighthearted banter they exchanged to break the tension.
The president’s eldest son reenacted part of their first conversation after the gunman shot the former president in Pennsylvania, in a recording that finally put an end to the uncertainty and included some father-son banter.
“Can I call you Evander Holyfield because of the piece of your ear you’re missing?” he said to his father, who has introduced boxing matches.
Don Jr. even adopted a respectable Trump impression to describe the way they cut the tension through humor, speaking in an interview with Axios outside the Republican convention.
“The most important thing: how is the hair?” he asked his father. “The hair is fine, Don. The hair is fine. There is a lot of blood, but it is fine,” his father replied.
Those jokes belie the horror Trump Jr. and his family experienced and the serious security questions he is demanding U.S. agencies answer about what went wrong.
Trump Jr. was highly visible during the second night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, though some of his father’s former foes stole the headlines.
At the end of her remarks and her support for Trump, the RNC attendees gave the former ambassador a warm round of applause.
Former U.N. ambassador and Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley put on a show of unity three days after Trump miraculously survived an assassination attempt, still sporting a bandage where a bullet pierced his right ear.
Haley, a strong primary rival who tried to paint Trump as a law-breaking, rule-defying bully, was unable to convince voters of her promise to “Make America Normal Again.”
But his reception by the former president, who gave him a friendly round of applause and a smile, may have – at least for the moment – calmed the conflict between the two Republican Party powerhouses.
Initial boos for the former South Carolina governor were quickly drowned out by cheers as she criticized Kamala Harris and urged the Republican Party to rally behind Trump after the horrific assassination attempt.
Haley has dropped her criticism of Trump and given him her full support in the general election battle against Biden.
He also admitted that “you don’t always have to agree with him to vote for him” and thanked him for his “kind invitation” to speak on Tuesday night.
“I’m going to start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my full support,” he said to thunderous applause.
“Our country is at a critical moment. We have a choice to make. For over a year, I have said that a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris. After watching the debate, everyone knows that is true.”
Ron DeSantis, another former Trump opponent in the primaries, effusively supported the former president
Savannah Chrisley compared her parents Todd and Julie Chrisley’s legal struggles to those of former President Donald Trump in her Republican National Convention speech on Tuesday.
Haley was part of a group that included another of Trump’s former opponents, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and ordinary Americans affected by border crime and the opioid epidemic.
The former president laughed with delight when DeSantis mocked Joe Biden’s sleep schedule and said America couldn’t handle four more years of his “weekend in the Bernie presidency.”
The second day of the Republican Convention featured many popular Republicans: Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), House Speaker Tom Emmer (R-MN), and more.
Speakers have criticized Biden’s border policies, the president’s age and vision of a renewed America under Trump’s leadership.
Elsewhere, the Republican Party continued to feature “regular Americans” who spoke of their horrific experiences living in the United States under President Joe Biden.
Anne Fundner, a mother whose teenage son died from fentanyl poisoning, said she held Democrats responsible.
The family of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman who authorities say was raped and murdered by a Salvadoran immigrant who had illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border multiple times, also blamed Biden’s policies.
One of the prime-time speakers, Madeline Brame, sharply criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted Trump for illegally orchestrating a bribery scheme to influence the 2016 election. That made Trump the first former president convicted of a felony.
Anne Fundner, a mother whose teenage son died from fentanyl poisoning, said she held Democrats responsible
One of the prime-time speakers, Madeline Brame, criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted Trump for illegally orchestrating a hush-money scheme to influence the 2016 election.
Brame accused Bragg of mishandling the cases against those accused of killing her son. She said of Trump: “He has been a victim of the same corrupt system that I and my family have been.”
He then repeated a version of a line he has uttered at rallies for years.
“They’re chasing us,” he said. “He’s just in the way.”
There was still some non-showbiz star power on the second night of the convention, when Savannah Chrisley compared the legal struggles of her parents Todd and Julie Chrisley to those of former President Trump.
The 26-year-old reality star-turned-podcast host gave a speech criticizing the prosecution and conviction of her parents, who were initially sentenced to a combined total of 19 years in federal prison.
She appeared in front of a huge backdrop with a police badge as she complained that the reality show’s stars were “persecuted” because of their “public profile and conservative beliefs.”
She claimed her allegedly unfair treatment was similar to that of Donald Trump, after he was convicted in New York state on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to efforts to conceal payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Chrisley went on to describe the US justice system as “two-faced” and claimed it targets “Christians and conservatives who the government has labeled as extremists or even worse.”