“Circumstances pertaining to government”. Those four quietly devastating words were the ones the president chose to use as his excuse for not attending Donald Trump Jr’s second wedding last weekend. Oh, and his “love for the United States of America” (no mention of his love for his eldest son on Truth Social).
Trump Sr could have easily come up with a proper excuse for not being able to make it. Even if he really did have some urgent “circumstances pertaining to government” to attend to, he could have expressed a bit more regret at having to miss such a milestone. Instead this seemed like an assertion of his own supremacy over his son.
This was not the first time the president had publicly expressed his lack of interest in his namesake’s nuptials. “Uhh, he’d like me to go,” Trump said, cuttingly, a few days earlier. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran, and other things.”