Trump Jr.: Dad can’t trust his aides after anonymous op-ed
Donald WASHINGTON —
Trump Jr. acknowledged in an interview broadcast Tuesday that his father can trust fewer people around him than he would like in the wake of an anonymous commentary claiming there is a “resistance” within the Trump administration.
“I think there are people in there that he can trust, it’s just — it’s a much smaller group than I would like it to be,” the president’s eldest son said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Asked whom he trusts, Trump Jr. declined to answer but suggested family members working in the White House remain in the fold. President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are both White House advisers.
“I’m talking outside family. That goes without saying,” Trump Jr. said.
“It would be easier to get things done if you’re able to fully trust everyone around you,” he added. “I think that’s a shame.”
The commentary, published by The New York Times last week, was written by a senior official in the Trump administration, according to the Times. It depicts a “two-track presidency” in which Trump acts according to his own whims while many of his top aides, in the author’s words, work to thwart his “more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
The piece’s publication has coincided with revelations from a new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that depicts a chaotic White House in which some aides have even removed papers from Trump’s desk to prevent him from taking what they believe to be unwarranted actions.
During the ABC interview, Trump Jr. said he believes the commentary was written by a “low-level person,” and he said that the Justice Department should investigate the author, as his father has suggested.
“This is very low-level person who will throw their name on an op-ed and basically subvert the vote of the American people who elected my father to do this job,” Trump Jr. said.
Asked whether he thinks any laws were broken, Trump Jr. said: “Listen, I think you’re subverting the will of the people. I mean, to try to control the presidency while not the president. You have millions and millions of Americans who voted for this.”
During the interview, Trump Jr. also said he is not worried about legal exposure resulting from the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“I’m not, because I know what I did, and I’m not worried about it,” Trump Jr. said.
Among his actions under scrutiny is a 2016 Trump Tower meeting that Trump Jr. helped organize with a Kremlin-aligned lawyer. Trump Jr. had been told that she would provide damaging information on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. said prosecutors could “try to create something” incriminating.
“I mean, we’ve seen that happen with everything,” he said. “I understand that they are trying to get my father, and they’ll do anything they can to get that.”