Amazon is reportedly toying with the idea of making Donald Trump Jr the host of a reboot of The Apprentice, the TV show that paved the way for his father’s political run.
There was speculation that Junior, the wildest, most Maga-fied Trump, was being primed to succeed Dad as president. He said last year “that [the] calling was there” in politics, and he has a solid fanbase in the gun-toting, big-mouth wing of the Republican party. Who better to carry the Donald Trump brand forward than the eldest son who bears his name? That’s the theory, but the President seems doubtful Junior, now a fully adult 48-year-old, has the chops to run a reality TV show, let alone the White House.
“He’s a good guy. He’d be probably good. He’s got a little charisma going. You need a little charisma for that sucker. So, we’ll see what happens,” Trump Sr told reporters in the Oval office.
The President is obsessed with building a dynasty and believes in the power of “great genes”. But like Logan Roy, the patriarch in the television drama Succession, Trump loves playing his children off against each other. He thinks it instills a healthy killer instinct in his privileged offspring.
If he could hand-pick his political and showbiz heir, it would be Ivanka. According to the book Apprentice in Wonderland (2024), when Trump left the show to run for president, he wanted his daughter to take it over. “I didn’t press it,” he reportedly said. “But I felt Ivanka would have been by the far the best person you could hire.”
Ivanka, 44, is his only child to have served in the White House. She was Trump’s senior adviser in his first term, promoting women’s empowerment (how quaint that now seems in a world of masculine energy) and played the diplomat and quasi-First Lady at summits with foreign leaders.
By nature a charmer rather than a divider, and shaken by the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Ivanka stayed out of the 2024 election. “I do not plan to be involved in politics,” she said when her father announced he was running again. Note her carefully calibrated use of the word “plan”.
Trump has done all he can to smooth her path with the experience and money needed to become America’s first woman president. Her husband Jared Kushner, also a former White House adviser, made a cool $2bn with Saudi investors on leaving office. He returned this year as a special “peace envoy” and leading Iran negotiator while continuing to do business in the Middle East.
I don’t doubt Jared would be delighted to serve as First Gentleman and consigliere to President Ivanka Trump, but they are both too smart to set their sights on the near future. With Trump at a low ebb – 55 per cent of Americans say they feel worse off, the worst number for 25 years, according to Gallup – 2028 may be a “change” election.
If Ivanka runs, it is likely to be when hostility to Trump has faded and nostalgia sets in. But her brothers have spotted a potential vacancy. Eric Trump, 42, the second son, told the Financial Times last year, “I think I could do it. And, by the way, I think other members of our family could do it too.”
And as the Bush family found out when George W beat favored son Jeb to the White House after their dad, timing is everything. Don Jr and Eric could vie with each other to go first. Don Jr has the biggest megaphone – he has a podcast and YouTube presence, has written a bestselling memoir, Triggered, and has said: “I’m used to getting up on a stage with a mic and talking to ten, fifteen thousand people.”
Both have become richer while their dad is in the White House. Eric, who manages the Trump Organization, briefly became a billionaire last year, according to Forbes, after expanding his wealth ten-fold since his father’s re-election.
Crypto investments have powered Don Jr and Eric’s exponential growth in wealth. Don Jr was reportedly worth an estimated $300m by the end of last year (his wealth grew six-fold). This week, the Financial Times reported that Don Jr and Eric have taken a stake in a Kazakh mining company, which secured up to $1.6bn in US government support last year.
Who will win the game of thrones? Eric’s wife Lara Trump is a highly political Fox News host. Don Jr has just postponed his planned wedding to Bettina Anderson (apparently it would be inappropriately lavish during the Iran war, according to a report in the Daily Mail). Ivanka is hors de combat, for now.
As with Logan Roy, Trump wants the final say and is not inclined to give up power anytime soon. He wants his boys to succeed, but not to elbow him out of the way. As Roy said in the most devastating line from Succession: “I love you, but you are not serious people.”