Donald Trump Jr. Emerges as the GOP ‘Relief Pitcher’ of 2018

HERSHEY, Pa. — On a recent Friday night, Pennsylvania Republicans tucked into a catered meal at the Hershey Lodge as Donald Trump Jr. took the stage, following his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, in what has become their pattern on the campaign trail this fall.

“If there’s one question that Donald Trump lied to all of you in this room about …” the president’s eldest son said to the hundreds of party officials at the annual fall state GOP dinner. He trailed off as the room seemed to quiver with nervousness at the use of the word “lied.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m getting somewhere — it’s not a gaffe, promise,” Trump said to laughter. “If there’s one thing he lied about, it’s that you’d all be sick of winning.”

The line has become a staple at many of the 60 events the younger Trump has held since May for Republican candidates and committees, as he has emerged as one of the GOP’s most visible headliners in a challenging midterms climate for the party.

It has also been a re-emergence of sort.

After damaging headlines in 2017 about possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia and Donald Trump Jr.'s role in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-connected Russians, the president’s son is appealing to the Republican base anew and mostly ignoring the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and all things Russia. He and Guilfoyle are instead radiating a carefree, tag-team vibe at events, in interviews and in a television ad for the super PAC supporting his father.

Trump has echoed his father’s attacks on Democrats, mocked former President Barack Obama for talking about a magic wand solving problems — “Abracadabra, buddy!” Trump chuckled from the stage in Hershey — and stoked fear about the out-of-power party winning a House majority in Tuesday’s elections.

The president is “the first politician to ever get killed on a daily basis for doing everything he said he would do — it’s mind boggling,” Trump said in his speech. “The mistake we sometimes make is thinking he can do it alone. He can’t.”

Visits from President Donald Trump have been a double-edged sword for Republican candidates in certain states, who want his backing but who fear blanket media coverage of his controversial statements.

A guest appearance by Donald Trump Jr. has become the next best thing for several candidates, some of whom he’s campaigned for repeatedly in states like Montana (where his father holds a grudge against Sen. Jon Tester, who is up for re-election), Ohio (a key part of the Trump 2016 victory), Nevada (a purple state that Trump would like to add to his column in 2020) and North Dakota and West Virginia (which, like the others, have high-profile Senate races this year). He is scheduled to headline six rallies in five states Monday.

The GOP base, with whom Trump was a family ambassador when his father campaigned in 2016, is almost as protective of Trump as they are of his father, seeing him as a looser version whom they can relate to, someone who does not carry himself like a celebrity.

As unfiltered and caution-free as his father is, Trump’s online persona can be even more reflexive and abrasive, mocking his father’s critics and seizing on instances of “hypocrisy.”

On Twitter, Trump has unapologetically defended Brett Kavanaugh, the new Supreme Court justice who faced sexual assault allegations, and claimed Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., was late in his support of the justice — despite having decided to back Kavanaugh before some of his GOP colleagues.

Trump has also attacked news outlets with gusto and amplified conservative memes, including retweeting a conspiratorial thread about killed Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In recent days, he declared that Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, wants to “repopulate Maine with Syrian and Somalian refugees.” At times, he has irked White House aides by being so vocal.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama and an architect of Obama’s historic win in 2008, described the younger Trump as “hotheaded and even more unrestrained than his dad when it comes to mixing it up.”

“If Trump Sr. employs a dog whistle, Jr. favors a bullhorn, joyfully transmitting nutty conspiracy theories that even his dad might be hesitant to embrace,” Axelrod added.

Trump, 40, said in an interview that he does not regret his use of social media, which often outdoes the president’s own. His father is “teaching other conservatives to fight,” Trump said. He focuses heavily on amplifying alternatives to established outlets that appeal to his father’s base of support, including some that traffic in misinformation, scrolling through his Twitter feed repeatedly to look at what is being said.

“We can fight back,” he said of the lesson of his father’s win. “We don’t just have to lose. We don’t just have to take it when they say you’re one of the ‘ists.’ We can be right.”

As Trump travels with Republican politicians on the campaign trail far from Washington, questions about the special counsel investigation and the Trump Tower meeting that he held with a Russian lawyer are absent.

“I have literally never been asked about it on the trail,” he said, adding that voters “realize it’s nonsense.”

“I did what any business guy would do. I took an unsolicited meeting, sat there for 20 minutes, wasted my time,” Trump said in the interview, saying the focus on it became a frenzy. (He said in 2017 that the meeting was primarily about Russian adoptions; a year later, the president said the meeting was to “get information on an opponent,” Hillary Clinton.)

If anything, Trump Jr. appears unconcerned about what may come with the Mueller inquiry after the midterms. He noted that he had cooperated fully with congressional committees looking into the 2016 campaign.

“Guess who didn’t plead the Fifth — me,” Trump said, referring to invoking Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, which others connected to the investigations have done. He has remained focused on his travels and his road show with Guilfoyle.

“She’s definitely a force multiplier,” Trump said of Guilfoyle, the ex-wife of the Democratic candidate for governor in California, Gavin Newsom, and his own constant companion since his recent split from his ex-wife, Vanessa. In Hershey, Guilfoyle told the crowd that her nickname for him, “Junior Mints,” would change to “Hershey’s Kiss.” “Delicious,” she added for effect.

His fluency in the language of the Republican base, which comes more naturally to him than any other Trump family member besides the president, has prompted constant questions about whether he will run someday.

“People love to hear him. He’s good at his delivery,” said Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., “and he’s got the passion of what he’s fighting for, but he connects with the average person.”

Trump said he is not trying to blanket the field with appearances — he is ruthless about not helping candidates who are lost causes — and he makes his picks based on a few specific criteria.

“There are two things I’m going to help people for — one is they’ve been exceptionally good to my father, the administration or me personally,” he said. “And then there’s what the numbers tell me.”

Republicans say he has made a difference, both in closed-door fundraisers and on the stump, because he is able to be at ease with both audiences.

“He’s like a relief pitcher — kind of loose and relaxed and easy to hang around with,” said Jeff Roe, the Republican strategist and general consultant for a number of high-profile races this year. “And all the sudden he comes in and throws 100 miles-per-hour fastballs.”

Roe said that Trump “has to find a place to live, and he has to find a place he’d enjoy, because he has to run for office.”

Trump says he is asked questions about his own future “every day,” but if there is a specific office he would be drawn to, he did not say. His supporters have mentioned possible runs for statewide office, almost certainly in red states where his father performed well.

“Right now, I’m focused on other things, but you never know. I love the intensity of campaigning,” he said. “I love aspects of the fight. I don’t know how much I would love aspects of the actual job yet.” On the stump, he excoriates democratic socialism and tethers it to the form of socialism practiced in Eastern Europe, where his Czech-born mother, Ivana, sent her children to see her parents for over a decade when they were growing up. Trump said his grandmother watches democratic socialism described on cable news and says her views — “You don’t understand how bad it is, you don’t know what happens,” he recalled her saying — have shaped his.

While his father has taken over the GOP, Trump said he is mindful that there are still holdouts within his own administration who miss the days before the Trump administration.

“I think there’s still plenty of people that are still old-school, established people that want those things back,” he said, “even if it means going back to losing.”