Speaking increasingly as a man of the people, Donald Trump Jr is “miserable” and can’t wait for his father’s presidency to end, reports People magazine.
“Don can’t do any deals, because he’ll be overly scrutinized. He just goes to work every day and is miserable,” a source close to the Trumps’ circle told the magazine.
A friend of the Trump brothers said they hate their role as First Sons: “Eric and Don, they never wanted this.”
It’s been a week since Trump Jr released an email chain revealing he met with a Russian lawyer who proffered damaging information about Hillary Clinton, the first concrete evidence that the Trump campaign may have colluded with the Russians to swing the 2016 election.
Since then, the president has defended his son as “a good boy.”
Trump Jr originally said the meeting was about adoption, before releasing the email chain that proved otherwise right before the New York Times published it. He said in an interview on Fox News that he “probably would have done things a little differently” and that the revelations in the email were “everything.” It’s since been revealed that several more people were in the meeting than Trump Jr had disclosed.
A family friend told People the loyalty within their family is “insane.”
“They would never speak against their dad,” the friend said.
But the magazine notes that sibling tension may be afoot. The president “doesn’t like failure and mistakes, and he doesn’t accept them,” says a source who has had business dealings with Trump. “You have to justify your existence to be in his realm.” The child most in step with Trump is daughter Ivanka, “who, by all accounts has always been his favorite.”
The source in the Trump’s circle added: “You can’t bite the hand that feeds you, but [Trump Jr.] can’t wait for these four years to be over.”
