On Nov. 8, 2016, Donald J. Trump made his children the future of the Republican Party. On Jan. 6, 2021, he took it away. As someone who has suckled at the teat of nepotism, I can attest that you’re only as famous or as popular as the parent who made you relevant in the first place. On Jan. 6, 2021 Trump went from “annoying but useful to the Republican Party” to “the thing that the Republican Party finally realizes is going to kill it.”
Sure, many of us knew Trump would kill the Republican Party like five years ago. But Republicans didn’t seem to realize it until armed Trump supporters overran the Capitol, killed a police officer, and had politicians hiding in their offices. Trump is over. Will he cause an all-out civil war? We honestly don’t know yet. But it’s too early to say we’ve escaped this whole fiasco.
The infamous day started like any other, with the Trump sons shopping civil war to the president’s supporters. Said Junior: “This isn’t their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party. If you’re gonna be the zero and not the hero, we’re coming for you and we’re going to have a good time doing it!”
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The president’s large adult sons have not shied away from civil war talk. In fact, on Jan. 5, the dumbest of the president’s children, Eric, tweeted: “I will personally work to defeat every single Republican Senator/Congressman who doesn't stand up against this fraud—they will be primaried in their next election and they will lose.”
Eric also told Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “I can tell you, Sean, any senator or any congressman that does not—meaning on this side—that does not fight tomorrow, I’m telling you, will not—their political career is over.” The president’s large adult sons consider themselves to be kingmakers, which is sort of ironic since Eric, who has never held any elected office, is supposed to be a businessman running a totally unrelated business. The demand was clear: Overturn the election or else daddy will be real mad. It was peak failson.
The Trump presidency has largely been one four year-long experiment in failsonness. What happens when a child of privilege who has never worked for anything gets everything? What happens when you make a failson president? And then that failson stacks his administration with other failsons? President Failson hired only the best people—like his daughter, who until working at the White House had mostly been designing sweatshop-manufactured plastic shoes, and his son-in-law, who mostly worked for his own father, a felon. One is not born a failson... well actually, maybe one is.
We know the Republican Party is done with Trump and his failsons because of what the biggest opportunist in the Senate said on the day of the coup. Lindsey Graham, Mr. Whatever Way the Wind Is Blowing, who’s practically been Trump’s caddy for the last four years, pronounced he was done pretending to like Trump so that he could get re-elected. “I hate it being this way. Oh my god I hate it... but today all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. I tried to be helpful,” Graham said Wednesday.
Emily Jane Fox wrote that a longtime friend of Ivanka told her, “It feels like everyone on the Upper East Side is texting me today. Suddenly they all want to join the Resistance.” That same friend told me on the phone, “I think it’s been a very slow process. I think when she came out against abortion that was the moment when people realized that she would do anything to get ahead.” This friend also told me, “In two weeks, MBS is going to be texting Hunter Biden. No one gives a shit about Jared Kushner anymore.”
The friend continued that people are sort of panicking. “A lot of Jared and Ivanka friends are either posting political things on their account for the first time or they are frantically hearting other people’s posts.” And she added that in her mind at least, “There’s an unwritten list, from people that went to Camp David [or] were papped with them at the Hess wedding or accepted their invitation to get a private tour of the White House—for those people too little, too late seems like an understatement.”
Trump may still be able to command his millions of white supremacists and Confederate fetishizers. But change is in the air, and as we know from the last four years of Republicans losing the House and the Senate, Trumpism isn’t transferable. Trumpism doesn’t scale. Will Ivanaka be able to win a primary against little Marco? Theoretically. Junior might be able to win Matt Gaetz’s Florida House seat, but he’s not going to be able ride daddy’s racism to the White House now or ever, and I for one am pretty fucking glad of that.
