Where did Trump’s court go?

This article is published in number 1 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until January 18, 2022

A year after the attack on Capitol Hill, American democracy is still doomed to look to the future knowing that it will see the past. Donald Trump, the inciter-in-chief of the most barbaric act of violence against institutions in recent American history, will be the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States in 2024. Only a serious health problem, a cataclysm worse than the one we are already experiencing, a radical change of opinion of 78 percent of Republicans who currently support it, or an unlikely judicial ban from public office could change this eventuality. Taking a deep breath to internalize the news, we can move on to the search for the element without which The Donald cannot truly say himself and therefore cannot be electorally competitive: the clan.

Trump is a tribal being, thriving on bloody relationships, absolute loyalty and backstabbing, fake dramas and plasticized relationships, its great reality show needs a continuous turnover of characters to produce the calculated frictions needed to keep the show going. The orange tuft it cannot stand without the glue of a dynasty. And if the great Kennedian dynasty does not exist – due to an evident lack of human resources at the height – a laughing court, a few advisors with no criminal record, four figures who nod on command are enough.

The exodus of the Trump tribe began on January 6, 2021: More than a grandiose story with a biblical flavor, it was a hasty escape from a president who sent his followers to storm Congress to defend the parallel universe in which Joe Biden stole the election and the Clinton family runs a child pornography traffic from the basement of a Washington pizza place. Where has Trump’s court gone since then?

Donald Jr, the eldest son, that cursed January 6 was on the stage in Washington. He did, as always, as a shoulder group to his father, he warmed up the crowd by shouting threateningly “let’s come and get you” to the treacherous Republicans who would have certified Biden’s election. Then, as events plummeted, something happened. He sent an alarmed message to Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff: “You need to condemn this shit soon. The tweet about the Capitol police is not enough ». This is one of the messages read during a hearing of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on the events of a year ago. They show that Trump’s praetorians clearly understood what was happening and tried, late and unsuccessfully, to stem the presidential delusion. The former president must not have taken well the flagrant betrayal of the family’s psychodramatic case, the one who desperately tries to look like his father in order to gain approval that is stubbornly denied, as Trump looks at his firstborn with the same gaze he looks at. the CNN. This explains why that day he did not send the message directly to his father, but it is certainly the most important fact of his recent story and one of the few he avoided writing about on social networks. Before that, he was reported to have gone hunting with the navy seal that claims to have fired the fatal shot at Osama Bin Laden, for a couple of self-published books – like any Danilo Toninelli – and bought in stock by the Republican Party for inflate sales and for the relationship with Kimberly Guilfoyle, a television celebrity and adept of Trumpism who in the past was also married to Gavin Newsom, governor of California who is competing for the palm of the most hated politician in the Republican world.

To find peace after the ruinous end of the presidency, Don Jr. and Kim sold the mansion in the Hamptons and bought one in Jupiter, Florida for just under $ 10 million. The investment is modest compared to that of Ivanka and Jared Kushner, who for 24 million dollars bought an over-protected seaside estate on an islet off Miami Beach. She has always been his father’s favorite, who a few years ago always repeated, believing it was funny, what if Ivanka had it not been his daughter, he would have gladly slept with her. Ivanka and her husband were the real rulers of the White House in the turbulent years of the Trump administration. She was the most listened to strategic adviser, he had full freedom to maneuver on any dossier, from the budget law to the Abrahamic Agreements. After the tragic ending there was the great cooling: the two never showed up in the Mar-a-Lago villa in Palm Springs, the patriarch’s headquarters, and disappeared from the radar for months. Suffering acutely from social exclusion, the couple decided to be seen at a Louis Vuitton show in Miami to commemorate fashion designer Virgil Abloh. It was supposed to be the readmission event to the world of presentables, but the nicest comment that appeared on Twitter was this: “These fascist collaborators should feel uneasy wherever they go.” Then there is a mystery about Ivanka’s role in the events of last January 6th. Senator Lindsey Graham said that day, knowing as all of her influence over her father, he called her asking to make her father give up and calm the situation. It is not known if she did. Among the messages read at the Congress, there are none of her own, but the commission wants to know if she, that day, was one of those who up to the last instigated the crowd or at least had the decency to get some belated afterthought.