Donald Trump Jr. made a humiliating blunder while stumping for Republican candidates in Ohio on the eve of the midterm elections.
On Monday, Don Jr. stepped off Air Force Two to “Stranglehold” by Ted Nugent—a MAGA rocker whose 1981 song “Jailbait” describes his desire to commit statutory rape on a 13-year-old girl—before opening for Vice President JD Vance at a campaign rally in Swanton, Ohio.
After spending several minutes railing against Democrats’ alleged efforts to “trans” children and a supposed shift on the left toward communism and socialism, Don Jr. leveled another bizarre accusation at his father’s midterm opponents.
“They want to, what is it? Save democracy by destroying democracy?” the president’s eldest child asked a group of Ohio voters. “They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to make Ohio a state.”
The crowd, which had previously responded to nearly every sentiment with whoops and cheers, fell silent. Ohio was admitted to the Union in 1803, and hasn’t left since.
The president’s son quickly pivoted to the nation’s capital without acknowledging his Ohio-sized blunder: “[Democrats] want to make D.C. a state, have a permanent one-party rule… They can do these things and get away with it all in the name of somehow preserving democracy.”
Some on the right have seen Don Jr. as a potential successor to his father, although he has never served in an official capacity in either administration. Instead, he became executive vice president of the Trump Organization and co-founded the World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company in 2024, helping to net his father more than $2.4 billion dollars over the next year—6,000 times Trump’s annual presidential salary.
Instead of using the campaign event to address the economic anxieties of voters, Junior opted to lambast the Somali immigrant community over alleged “ballot harvesting” and their support for Amy Acton, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Ohio.
“How did that work out in Minnesota? What ended up happening with a lot of that?… There will be ‘Quality Learing Centers’ all over the great state of Ohio. Paid for by you and other American taxpayers as they defraud the country,” he said.
The campaign-trail embarrassment comes amid fresh scrutiny of Don Jr.’s lavish wedding celebration with Bettina Anderson, which was reportedly bankrolled in part by Umar Kremlev, a Russian businessman with close ties to Vladimir Putin.
Kremlev later claimed Don Jr. had repaid the money, although the revelation reportedly left the elder president furious with his eldest son.
