Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter and even more avid hunting message board user, will officially be taking over the family business come inauguration day. This means that there’s absolutely no world in which Don Jr. should be meddling in his father’s pending presidency whatsoever. Except, apparently, for the world in which he really, really wants to. You know, this one.
Yesterday, Politico wrote that “the president elect’s eldest son, was involved with the interview process for Interior secretary, according to sources familiar with the discussions. He sat in on interviews, and made calls to candidates, according to sources familiar with the process.” When it came down to Montana-bred Rep. Ryan Zinke and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, and despite a severe dearth of women in Trump’s cabinet, the eldest Trump scion had to go with his newfound hunting buddy.
Mr. Zinke, Montana’s sole House member and a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, resigned as a delegate to the GOP’s convention this past summer because its platform calls for a transfer of federally owned wilderness lands to the states. That is a position favored by most Republicans, including Ms. McMorris Rodgers, but the president-elect and his son, an avid hunter, oppose it.
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The younger Mr. Trump has a longtime interest in preserving wilderness areas for hunting and fishing, and Mr. Zinke’s own opposition to selling off federal lands stems from his concern that it would mean less access to public lands for outdoor sports.
This dynamic helps explain why the president-elect settled on a relatively little-known figure for his interior pick, unlike his choices for most other high-profile posts.
Of course, while some environmentalists are in favor of this sort of land preservation as a means of protecting both the environment and endangered species, Don Jr. and Zinke use the movement as a means for ensuring space to hunt. And at least for Don Jr., assuming his Instagram activity is any indication, killing animals and daydreaming about killing animals is one of his primary interests:
But just because he managed to get Zinke in doesn’t mean that the littler Donald will be bowing out of his highly unethical presidential meddling. As The Wall Street Journal wrote, Don Jr. assured his fellow huntsmen in an interview this past summer, “I know he’s going to trust me with a lot of these issues, and I know that I’m personally going to be involved. I can be the very, very loud voice in his ear, you know, on a lot of these issues.”
On the other hand, Donald Trump says it’s fine.
And what reason could he possibly have to lie.