86 OCTOBER 2019 THE ATLANTICLIFEPICTURECOLLECTION/GETTYpath to the family business after college, bartending and bumming around
Colorado for a year and a half while his father seethed.
With his slicked-back hair and pin-striped suits, Don had carried a cer-
tain fratty energy into adulthood that periodically got him into trouble. (In
2002, Page Six reported that he got a beer stein to the head at a New York
comedy club after some patrons thought he was “reacting too enthusiasti-
cally to [Chris Rock’s] ethnic humor.”) He spent weekdays working at the
Trump Organization, where he developed a millionaire’s belief in low taxes,
and weekends in the wilderness with his hunting buddies, where he gained
an appreciation for gun rights. As a result, Don came to conservatism years
before the rest of his family.
Yet when Don offered to help his father’s campaign, many of the tasks he
received had a whiff of condescension. Trump had always been embarrassed
by his son’s hunting, especially after photos emerged in 2012 of Don posing
with the severed tail of an elephant he’d slain in Zimbabwe. But now that the
candidate was wooing rural Republicans, he was happy to let Don put on that
goofy orange vest and shoot at stuff for the cameras. “You can finally do some-
thing for me,” Trump told Don, according to a former aide.Don had long ago come to understand that Ivanka
was his father’s favorite. “Daddy’s little girl!” he liked
to joke. But making peace with her husband’s status in
the family was harder. Ever since Ivanka had married
Jared, Don had been made to watch as this effete, soft-
spoken interloper cozied up to his dad. “The brothers
thought Jared was a yes-man,” said a former Trump
adviser. “Don, especially, looked at him as very suspect.”
But Ivanka and Jared’s real power was rooted in
Trump’s aspir ations for the family. The couple stood
as avatars for the elite respectability he’d spent his life
futilely chasing. They belonged to a world that had
long excluded him, dined in penthouses where he’d
been derided as a nouveau riche rube. Cultivated and
urbane, they embodied the high-class, patrician ideal
he so desperately wanted the Trump name to evoke.
Don—the screwup, the blowhard, the hunter—
didn’t stand a chance.TENSIONS BETWEEN DON AND
Jared sharpened in the spring of 2016, as
it became clear that Trump was going to
fire his campaign manager. With Corey
Lewandowski on the way out, Don and
Jared each began vying for larger roles in
the campaign, accord ing to two Repub-
lican operatives who worked for Trump.
People close to the candidate knew
he would never entrust his campaign
to his son—Don’s chances of taking the
reins were “less than zero,” a former
adviser told me. But Don seemed like
the last one to realize it. He hustled to
prove that he was up to the task, swap-
ping texts and emails with anyone who
said they could help his dad’s candi-
dacy. It was during this period that Don
set up a meeting with a Russian lawyer
who claimed to have dirt on Hillary
Clinton. “The Trump Tower meeting
was Don’s move to take over the cam-
paign,” a former aide told me. “He was
trying to show his father he was compe-
tent.” (The spokesperson for Don said:
“More fiction.”)
The full extent of the mess Don was
making wouldn’t be clear for another
year. But even in the moment, the meet-
ing was a bust. The Russians rambled
about adoption policy, Jared emailed his
assis tant looking for an excuse to leave,
and no useful intel was produced. Don
had wasted everybody’s time.
Jared and Ivanka took a savvier
approach to consolidating power, cul-
tivating the new campaign chairman,
Paul Manafort, as an ally. By the fall,
Jared was traveling virtually full-time
with Trump on his private plane, while
Don was sent to stump in far-flung
states no one else had time for. “I just
Trump with Ivanka in 1991 wake up in the morning and go to