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I would call what President Donald Trump just did to his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., a slap in the face if it weren’t for the existence of a widely circulated anecdote about a time Trump once allegedly literally slapped Jr. in the face, in front of a bunch of his college classmates. Still, as figurative slaps in the face go, this one had to hurt: The president just told the world that he’s not sure if he’s going to make it to Don Jr.’s wedding this weekend.
Don Jr. is set to marry socialite Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas in the coming days, and while taking questions in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump was asked if he plans to attend. “Uhhhh. He’d like me to go,” Trump said. Already with that loaded uhhhh, he wasn’t off to a great start. “I’m gonna try and make it. But it’s going to be a just a small, little private affair. … I said, ‘This is not good timing for me. I have a thing called “Iran” and other things.’ ”
Sigh. Even when he’s being dismissive of his own flesh and blood and flippant about war, in addition to being just kind of out of it, the man still has a way with words. “A Thing Called Iran” sounds like a lost Tennessee Williams play. Does anyone actually buy that he’s too busy to attend? While it’s true that we’re at war, it’s also true that Trump started the war, and now we can’t rule out the possibility that he did so in order to get out of going to this wedding. Not to mention, Trump finds time to golf one out of every five days—he can probably find a few hours to zip down to his son’s wedding.
Trump went on, “That’s one I can’t win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed.” By the media, he meant, of course. While it’s entertaining to think Trump might sincerely believe that skipping his own son’s wedding would be counteractively good for his image, because it would show not that he is a cruel man who doesn’t love his son but a hardworking one, the far likelier explanation is that Trump just doesn’t feel like going. He doesn’t take the same sort of pride and joy in his children that others do, his relationship with Don Jr. has always been fraught, and he thinks weddings are boring because they’re not about him, so yeah, he’s not going to pretend to be excited.
My guess is that he will end up going in the end anyway—wars are clearly boring to him, too—rendering this fuss he’s making about how he might not completely pointless. It’s mean and messy for no reason, which is classic Trump. What’s the fun of just being a dutiful father? This way he still gets to withhold something and ensure that Don Jr. never for even a minute feels secure in his father’s love for him, which is sick, but such is the Trump family way. It’s the kind of thing that might make you feel bad for Trump Jr., if he weren’t who he is.
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Later in the video that’s circulating online, Trump says one more thing of note, but sadly I have to debunk what people online think he said. He did not say, in reference to his son, “He’s a person I’ve known for a long time,” as funny as that would have been. What he actually said was, “No, but he’s got a very—a person I’ve known for a long time.” While he definitely got a little lost in that sentence, it seems pretty clear to me that he was talking about the woman Don Jr. is marrying, Anderson. I did wonder, though, if Trump has actually known her a long time, because even though he may have encountered her in Palm Beach, Florida, where she’s from and he has a home, she and Don Jr. are a relatively recent development. They got together in 2024, when the younger Trump was actually still engaged to his previous fiancé, Kimberly Guilfoyle. I don’t think Trump was trying to make a dig at his ne’er-do-well son’s awkward dating history per se, but Trump has seen Jr.’s romantic partners come and go. He himself has been married three times. So another reason for his lack of enthusiasm for his son’s wedding could be that he figures if he misses this one, no biggie, he can go to the next.
