Trump Family Values on CNN
Donald Trump did himself a favor by agreeing to have his family appear on CNN’s “town hall” series with the Republican candidates’ families. On Tuesday night, daughters Ivanka and Tiffany, sons Donald, Jr., and Eric, and wife Melania made their old man look like a good father, husband, and grandfather, and ended up making a few interesting comments.
Ivanka, by far the most poised and articulate of the bunch — and I’m including Dad in that — said that from her perspective on the campaign, “politics is a vicious industry.” She observed that her father “is guiding the conversation on both sides of the aisle.” And Ivanka compared the Republican debates to “a cage match… and he’s the man to take down.”
The sons spoke of the education in business they’ve received, noting that while Trump will let them make their own decisions in company dealings, but that if you screw up, “you’ll hear about it forever.” This probably struck a lot of the citizens in the audience — who posed questions along with moderator Anderson Cooper — as pretty much what you’d expect to hear about Trump as a father: someone just this side of Robert Duvall in The Great Santini.
Melania said she sometimes encouraged her husband to “use nicer language” but has pretty much given up on the idea of reining in his bumptious behavior on Twitter; after a while, she said, she told him, “OK, you’re an adult — do whatever you want.”
Trump himself made a couple of striking comments. One was that his vice presidential pick will be a Washington insider, a professional politician — “You don’t need two [people] like me,” he said with winning ruefulness. Asked by Cooper about the difference between competition in the business and political worlds, Trump said, “Political life is more dishonest… and business people are tougher [than politicians].”
In case you doubted it, Trump said, yes, he writes all his own tweets: During the day, he’ll “shout it out” to one of his office assistants to tweet out for him, but “after 7 p.m., I’ll do it myself.”
The Trump family visit to CNN was the second of three such clan gatherings; John Kasich’s family appeared Monday night, and Ted Cruz will summon his brood to Cooper’s den on Wednesday night.
