“What If He’s a Loser?” Don Jr.’s Struggle to Meet His Father’s Expectations
Photograph by Jeff Vinnick / Getty WASHINGTON
In the quest to please his difficult father, Don Jr. struggled to make his mark under the shadow of the notorious and successful Donald Trump. As a shy kid with a social, bold, and confident father, he didn’t feel capable of carrying the weight of his last name. Speaking of names, while he was named after his father, Trump referred to his eldest son with a moniker he “hated” for himself.
The former president takes immense pride in his last name, synonymous with success and fame. However, when Don Jr. was born, the businessman-turned-politician was against the idea of sharing his moniker with his son, telling his wife Ivana, “You can’t do that! What if he’s a loser?” according to GQ Magazine.
Despite Trump’s reservations, Ivana was certain she wanted to “raise” a Trump. As a child, Don Jr. didn’t realize he had been bestowed with the responsibility of carrying forward his father’s legacy. In fact, while growing up, the ex-commander-in-chief called his eldest child “Donny,” a name the elder Trump would never go by. He admitted in “The Art of the Deal,” “[It’s] a name I hate.”
Several reports have surfaced about the conflicted relationship between father and son. Over the years, Don Jr. has made efforts to earn a spot as close as his sister Ivanka in their father’s heart. According to a former Trump advisor, Don Jr. feels the most pressure, “I think Don gets it a lot. Everyone talks about Ivanka, but Don also has a lot of pressure on him.”
“Everyone wants approval from the father, especially if the father is Trump. He has a special place in his heart for Ivanka. But Don is the eldest son, he’s named after him, he’s doing the nitty-gritty on the real estate, he’s got a lot of responsibility, and Trump is tough on everybody. He’s the alpha male. He sees his son as somebody he has to groom,” the advisor added.
In 2010, a Brazilian journalist quizzed Don Jr. on the pressure, and the now-46-year-old admitted, “There probably shouldn’t be. But there is for me, because you want to please someone like that, and he’s a perfectionist. There’s definitely always that shadow that follows you around, like how is this guy, the son of someone so good at what he does, going to act?”
After his mother Ivana divorced Trump in 1990, Don Jr. developed ill feelings for his father, blaming the Republican front-runner for his extramarital affair with second-wife Marla Maples. “Listen, it’s tough to be a 12-year-old,” he told PEOPLE. “You’re not quite a man, but you think you are. You think you know everything. Being driven into school every day and you see the front page and it’s divorce!”
He confessed that the gossip column coverage of his parents’ divorce affected his relationship with his father, but he later understood he was being “manipulated” into believing that by his late mother.
