Donald Trump Jr. had a tense back-and-forth with a reporter for NBC News at the Republican National Convention Monday, during which he called the news crew “clowns” and ultimately shooed them away by saying, “get out of here!”
The exchange was cordial at first, with NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff asking the eldest Trump child about the former president’s plan to change his convention speech in light of Saturday’s assassination attempt, supposedly pivoting to a message of “unity.”
“I think he did spend a lot of time changing up the message of what it’s been. He’s been under constant attack, but it’s a different time in America. A lot has happened in the last 48 hours,” Trump Jr. said, even as the tone of his father’s Truth Social posts hasn’t changed much.
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Soboroff followed up by asking how such a change would take shape if the former president was reelected.
“Your father, as president—I think even you would say he was a divisive figure—what’s it going to look like in a second term?” he asked.
At this point, the dialogue took a turn, with Trump Jr. predictably insisting that his father “wasn’t divisive at all,” and that it was “the media” furthering that perception.
Soboroff then asked specifically about former President Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy, whereby more than 5,000 children and infants were separated from their parents once apprehended crossing the border from Mexico.
“You mean the Obama administration?” Trump Jr. snapped, continuing to speak as Soboroff withdrew the microphone.
“You know they didn’t do that,” said Soboroff, who authored a book on Trump’s policy, when he ended up backing away from via an executive order.
“Yeah, okay. Sure,” Trump Jr. said sarcastically, grinning. “It’s MSDNC,” he added a moment later. “So I expect nothing less from you clowns. Even today, even 48 hours later, you couldn’t wait. You couldn’t wait with your lies and with your nonsense, so just get out of here.”
Many children have still not been reunited—up to 2,000, according to one estimate. And Trump Jr.’s attempt to equate what his father did with the immigration policy championed by the Obama administration is misleading, as determined by FactCheck.org in 2018 after defenders of the policy made the same counter-argument.
