The XX Factor

On CNN, Donald Trump’s Kids Use Their Father’s “Talk but Don’t Say Anything” Strategy

Work, work, and more work!

CNN

Many species greet their newborn offspring with a warm tongue bath. On CNN last night, Donald Trump received one from his adult children. The “town hall,” in which New York Republican voters were given a chance to ask questions of Trump, his wife, Melania, and four of his five children—Apprentice stars Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, and Tiffany, his daughter from his second marriage—was the friendliest of forums. Of the questioners introduced by host Anderson Cooper as “leaning” toward voting for Trump in next Tuesday’s primary, several spontaneously declared that the display of family unity had shifted them into the definite camp. One greeted the Trump clan with a grinning thumbs-up.

Like their father, the Trump kids have learned that the best way to avoid answering a question is to speak at length, regardless of content. Ivanka, in particular, showed impressive breath control, maintaining an even flow of words that Cooper was unable or didn’t dare to interrupt. Take, for instance, her response to an early question about why they she and Eric hadn’t registered in time to vote in the primary:

It was actually a very interesting experience. We’re not a family of politicians; we haven’t been in politics very long. New York has one of the most onerous rules in terms of registration, and it required us to register a long time ago—almost, close to a year ago. And we didn’t do that. We found out about it sort of after the fact, but it was actually why I started making a series of videos, to educate people in each of the individual states, because every state is different. Most states you can register as late as the day of the actual primary.

Never mind that millions of people whose families aren’t in politics managed to register in time. And never mind that New York’s deadline for registered voters to change their party affiliation (Ivanka claimed she had previously been a registered independent) was October, which is hardly “close to a year ago.” Since Eric claimed to be a Republican of long standing, his registration deadline would have been much later—only last month if he was registering for the first time. But he, too, used the talk-but-don’t-say-anything strategy: “It was our first kind of foray into politics. We didn’t realize how the whole system worked. It was amazing,” and so on until it was time for the next topic. Cooper rarely attempted a follow-up all night.

After their reality TV gigs and their time on the campaign trail, the next generation of Trumps are poised and comfortable in the spotlight, but at times intimations of the family’s peculiar dynamics snuck through nevertheless. Although everyone stuck to their talking points and stressed Donald’s devotion to deal-making, Eric went a little off the deep end when answering a question about how he bonded with his dad: “We love work. That’s something that really brings us together. We love building. The two of us just love machinery. We love building. We love concrete. We love jobs—we’ll sit on the phone at 6 o’clock in the morning and just talk about our favorite jobs.” Then after a pause, “We also love golf.”

Blended families are hardly unusual in America, but everyone knows that the rich are different from you and me—and it was hard to avoid wondering if the kids from the Donald’s first marriage got along with Tiffany quite as well as they wanted us to believe, or how the four kids on stage get on with his third wife. The Trumps were wise enough to avoid any “aw shucks, we’re just like you” moves—Donald Jr. even mentioned calling his dad from boarding school back when his parents were getting divorced. Melania said more than once that she stays home with their 10-year-old son Barron to teach him “morals and values”; and when asked how his brother’s premature death from alcoholism had affected him, Donald Trump said that he’d never taken a drink and that he’d repeatedly told his kids to stay away from drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. It’s a testament to Trump’s radical inarticulacy that he seemed to think there was something unusually profound in his advice to the American people: “Keep your children away from the drugs and the alcohol. It’s going to make their life so much easier.”

The only moment of genuine interest was when Ivanka balked at a question about how her father had taken her conversion to Judaism. “It’s such a personal decision, I tend not to talk about it in a personal forum,” she said, before launching into a stream of consciousness about how her father supports her decisions. For the most part, though, the CNN town hall was an hourlong version of the part of a job interview where the candidate—or in this case, his whole family—is asked to talk about his strengths. On CNN. In prime time.