How Donald Trump Jr. Became the Crown Prince of MAGA World

The eldest son has a mission for the next four years: keeping ‘snakes’ out of the White House

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Molly Ball

Oct. 6, 2024 5:00 am ET

Sitting next to the man he installed as the Republican vice presidential nominee, Donald Trump Jr.couldn’t help but gloat.

“I expended about 1,000% of my political capital” convincing his father to select JD Vance, he said with a grin as Vance smiled bashfully beside him. “Making the argument, getting others who believe the same thing to do that—you know, just a constant barrage. I can be pretty persistent when I need to be.”

It was early on the morning of the vice presidential debate, and Trump Jr. and Vance were sipping coffee and reflecting on their unlikely partnership in an upper-floor suite of the Trump Hotel overlooking New York’s Central Park. Apart from their matching chinstrap beards, the two men cut dramatically different figures. Trump, 46, looked ready to headline a fundraiser in a crisp tieless suit; Vance, 40, looked like an undergrad who had been up all night cramming for finals, with disheveled hair and a ratty blue T-shirt reading OHIO’S LAKE ERIE.

That Trump Jr. succeeded in muscling his buddy onto the ticket, after what he describes as an aggressive, multipronged public and private lobbying effort, was testament to the dominant position he has assumed in his father’s orbit. The crown prince of MAGA world wears many hats—campaigner, propagandist, author, podcaster, businessman, memelord—and not all Republicans believe his influence is positive. But after a lifetime of scraping for his dad’s approval, he has become the former president’s most essential political adviser, the conduit and gatekeeper who keeps the GOP nominee in step with his base.

Though he keeps up a packed schedule campaigning for next month’s election, Trump Jr.’s primary focus is what happens afterward. He is working to make sure the next Trump administration and GOP Congress are stocked with more JD Vances—and to keep out those who might hinder an aggressive second-term agenda. “What I want to do is work on the transition, and it’s not about placing people,” he said. “It’s about blocking the people who would be a disaster in that administration. I will cut out so many people, people’s heads are going to spin.”

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump stand behind their father at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

Vance refers to their project as “keeping the snakes out of the administration,” and said they have “probably discussed or floated thousands of names at this point,” from Treasury secretary and secretary of state on down to low-level appointees. It is a project with potentially momentous consequences. They are determined to avoid the conflicting agendas and infighting that dogged Trump’s first term and instead ensure that the president is unrestrained in pursuit of his desired outcomes.

“My role will be to make sure that those bad actors are not getting into the administration to subvert my father and his policies,” Trump Jr. said. “Now we know who those people are. In ’16, we had no idea.”

The Gatekeeper

Trump’s first administration was frequently reined in by appointees desperate to stop him from doing things they believed were unwise, dangerous or illegal. Aides snatched executive orders off his desk to prevent him from signing them, cabinet members slow-walked his plans, military generals pretended to follow his orders while ignoring them and senior officials refused to draw up proposals he requested. Staffers alarmed by his impulses continually leaked to the press or quit in protest. At the end of his term, his attorney general resigned rather than pursue baseless election-fraud claims, and his vice president certified the election in the face of a rampaging mob.

Trump Jr. and Vance have maneuvered themselves into position to ensure no such obstacles stand in his way the second time around. “In the first administration you had Jared and Ivanka working in the White House, pro-business Democrats pushing him toward the mainstream,” said a former administration official who was one of several to make a similar comparison with Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, who have sat out the current campaign. “I don’t think there’s any question that in the family firmament, Jared has been extracted, and Don Jr. has filled the role.”

Some traditional Republicans have heartburn about the direction in which Trump Jr. is pushing the party, which is often not aligned with the conservative principles of the pre-Trump era. “Why do I wanna vote for a party that supports a massive expansion of government, mandates on businesses, and an industrial policy set by government experts who regularly get everything wrong?” the talk-radio host Erick Erickson complained on X in the wake of the VP debate, accusing Vance of advocating “the Democratic Party platform of Walter Mondale.”

There are also recriminations in GOP circles about the selection of Vance, who, despite a strong debate performance, is the least well-liked running mate in recent history. “I don’t know how Trump hasn’t turned on him by now,” one campaign insider marveled.

Donald Trump Jr. is a popular campaign surrogate for his father.

But Trump Jr.’s allies consider him a vital voice in his father’s ear. “I think Trump has learned that Don has a gut-level understanding of his voters, and he’s been very persistent in representing their views,” said Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, who joined Trump Jr. in lobbying for Vance and was “amazed and delighted” by the selection. Carlson and Trump Jr. are occasional hunting and fishing companions; among Trump Jr.’s many ventures is a high-end, largely nonpolitical sportsmen’s lifestyle magazine called Field Ethos. “To this day a lot of Republican strategists can’t understand the actual voters that make up the party. Don understands them instinctively.”

Trump Jr. uses those instincts to steer his father’s political pitch. He has encouraged Trump to appear with “manosphere” influencers like the podcaster Theo Von; he also pushed his father to downplay his administration’s Operation Warp Speed Covid vaccine program and emphasize his opposition to vaccine mandates instead. He was a driving force in bringing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.and Tulsi Gabbard into the Trump coalition, courting Kennedy for months before he dropped out of the race in August, according to a source familiar with his efforts.

Vance has made clear he wouldn’t try to rein in Trump and wouldn’t have stood up to him as Pence did on Jan. 6, 2021. Later that night, at the debate, Vance would refuse to admit Trump lost the 2020 election.

“Obviously, the president has the restraints of the Constitution,” Vance said during the interview. “But I certainly think it’s really important that the people in his administration actually agree with him, or at the very least they accept that he’s the president of the United States and you have to follow his leadership.”

Trump Jr., he said, is an instrumental force in the new right. “I don’t think I would have won my Senate race without Don’s help. And I certainly don’t think I’d be sitting here as the VP nominee without Don’s help.”

Donald Trump Jr. lobbied his father to select JD Vance as his running mate.

‘The No. 1 Surrogate’

Trump Jr. looked out the hotel window at the million-dollar panorama of the Manhattan skyline and laughed at the irony of it: “My view growing up was a little bit far away from Appalachia.” But his childhood, he pointed out, was split between New York City and rural Czechoslovakia, where he spent summers with his maternal grandfather, who taught him to hunt and fish and gave him a different perspective from his parents’ gilded bubble.

He was 12 when his parents’ divorce consumed the tabloids, and he didn’t speak to his father for a year afterward. He left the city for boarding school in Pottstown, Pa., where he says he gained insight into the plight of the declining Rust Belt. Heavyset and heavy drinking, he spent a year bartending in Aspen, Colo., after graduating college before returning east, joining the family business and marrying a model his father introduced him to at a fashion show. (He divorced Vanessa Trump, the mother of his five children, in 2018, and has been engaged to the right-wing personality Kimberly Guilfoyle since 2020.) He co-hosted “The Apprentice” and developed his father’s properties. During the 2016 campaign, he made headlines for soliciting dirt on Hillary Clinton from a lawyer connected to the Russian government. He seemed destined to drift along in the silver-spoon life of a Trump scion.

But then his father won the election—and Trump Jr. found his calling. With his rapid-fire patter and steady stream of social-media jokes and memes, often bombastic and offensive, he proved adept at channeling his father’s appeal. Trump Sr., the son said, “always jokes—or maybe doesn’t joke, I’m not 100% sure sometimes with him—‘You know, you’re much better at politics than you were at real estate.’”

Donald Trump Jr. and his father at a Manchester, N.H., rally on the last night of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump Jr.’s shtick is beloved by both multimillionaire GOP donors and rank-and-file campaign crowds. “From a donor standpoint, he’s by far the No. 1 requested person,” said a top GOP fundraising consultant. “He goes places and they sell out immediately. He’s the No. 1 surrogate and it’s not even close. It’s pretty rare that you have someone who has that kind of hybrid appeal with both donors and grassroots.”

As the election nears, Trump Jr. is on the road constantly campaigning and fundraising for his father’s effort and conservative groups. In New Hudson, Mich., on Monday, dozens of fans packed into a restaurant and gun store with a glass wall overlooking a shooting range to hear him speak. Dressed semi-casually in khakis and Adidas sneakers, he ran through a series of impressions of Democrats and his father, to the delight of the crowd.

“He’s just as smart as his dad,” 54-year-old local resident Jennifer Brigmon said after getting a photo with him in front of the campaign bus. “I feel like he could be president.” Her 18-year-old daughter Kate, who will vote for the first time this year, said he spoke to her concerns as a Gen Z voter, such as homeownership being out of reach.

Building the ‘Patriot Economy’

Trump Jr.’s podcast is one of the most popular on the Rumble platform, and his first book, “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us,” was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, though sales were goosed by bulk purchases by GOP committees and conservative organizations. He is an investor in Public Square, an online shopping platform for companies that target conservative audiences, and sits on the board of Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social platform. A 2022 whistleblower complaint by a former executive at the company describes Trump Jr. as demanding a large stake in the company despite having little involvement in its operations.

Trump Jr. is also involved in the new Trump-backed World Liberty Financial crypto platform, which has been beset by hacks and scams since launching last month. Crypto insiders have criticized the project for its amateurish rollout, and the family’s financial involvement in such a project opens the possibility of conflicts of interest if Trump—who has reversed his first-term stance against loosening blockchain regulations—returns to the White House.

Donald Trump Jr. signs books with his family during the Republican National Convention.

Trump Jr. denies accusations he’s profiting off politics, pointing to the recent $454 million civil fraud judgment against his father’s business in a New York court to argue that politics has been detrimental to the family’s finances. (The ruling earlier this year prohibited Trump Jr. and his brother Eric from serving as an officer or director of a New York company for two years.) His investments, he claims, are aimed at giving conservatives an alternative to “woke” corporations.

“I’ve been building up ‘patriot economy’ businesses that are helping service a big portion of the population who’ve been isolated, who’ve been de-banked or lost their insurance” for expressing right-wing views, he said. “If I wanted to profiteer, I’d get into government.” He said he has no interest in ever taking a government job and doesn’t plan to run for office. (If he did want to run for office, allies contend, he wouldn’t have promoted a 40-year-old political wunderkind to serve alongside his father.)

Trump Jr. has become the most politically prominent of the three full siblings. Ivanka announced at the start of the current campaign that she didn’t plan to be involved and said in a recent podcast interview that she preferred to avoid the “dark world” of politics. Eric introduced his father at the Republican Convention and his wife Lara Trump serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, but he devotes the bulk of his attention to business matters, associates say.

Rather than run for office himself, Trump Jr. insists he prefers to serve on the outside, advancing the mission of shaping the GOP’s future. Vance isn’t the only lawmaker he’s handpicked and promoted. Rep. Jim Banks, a wonky young Indiana congressman who grew up in a trailer park, caught Trump Jr.’s eye with a 2021 memo calling on the party to ignore the “embittered and loud minority in the GOP that finds our new coalition distasteful” and seize the opportunity to “permanently become the Party of the Working Class.” Trump Jr. was one of Banks’s first supporters in his current run for Senate, endorsing him even before his father did, hosting multiple fundraisers and campaign events and helping clear the field of GOP competition.

”More than anybody, Don is focused on the future of the movement, building the new Republican Party, getting younger people like myself and JD elected in key places,” Banks said. “He recognizes those of us who are fighting back, changing the old-school Republican Party to the America First, pro-Trump party.” In the next Trump administration, Trump Jr. will be well positioned to call in favors from the Congress he has stocked with friends and allies. Rep. Matt Gaetz, the right-wing lightning rod who ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said Trump Jr. regularly talks with GOP lawmakers about policy, particularly foreign affairs, as well as congressional leadership contests.

Donald Trump Jr. listens to his father talk to reporters outside a Manhattan courtroom in May.

When Vance ran for Senate as a former Trump skeptic who had recently seen the light, he caught Trump Jr.’s attention as the only candidate in a GOP primary debate to oppose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Despite the men’s vastly different backgrounds, their ideological kinship—a determination to eject the out-of-touch old guard of neocons and the managerial class from the upper ranks of the GOP—binds them together, both men attest.

“We both instinctively understand where America’s leadership has left working people behind,” Vance said. “We both have similar views on foreign policy, similar views on trade policy. I think the Republican Party has just drastically changed and there’s no going back. And my job is to make sure that that change is successful and effective and can actually implement successful public policies.”

Diluting his cup of hotel coffee with Trump-branded bottled water, Trump Jr. nodded in agreement. Putting Vance on the GOP ticket “was about finding someone who actually has that fortitude to fight, to stick to their values, and there’s just not many of them in the Republican Party,” he said.

“I don’t want just MAGA with only Trump, and then it goes back to the old ways,” Trump Jr. added. “We need to have a bench. And for a long time I don’t think we had any of that. And this election cycle, you’ve seen the emergence of people that can actually carry that mantle. I think that’s really important.”

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