It makes sense that Donald Trump thinks in terms of dynasties. After all, although he claims to be a self-made man, an investigation by the New York Times in 2018 reported that he had received the equivalent of $413 million from his father Fred, a New York City property developer. He is head of the Trump Organization, based at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, where his sons Donald Jr. and Eric are executive vice presidents.
Trump also regards his name as a powerful brand. His social media platform Truth Social is operated by the Trump Media and Technology Group (stock symbol: DJT). Among the many now-defunct entities that bore his name was a financial services provider called Trump Mortgage; an entertainment business called Trump Productions; a journal variously titled Trump Style, Trump World and Trump Magazine; and the infamous Trump University. Sixteen golf courses bear his name, as do three hotels and a Virginia winery.
This is not just the familial hoarding of power in a private corporation. After taking office as president in 2017, Trump appointed his daughter Ivanka as an advisor, with responsibility for women’s issues, workforce development and entrepreneurship. Her husband, Jared Kushner, then 36 and a registered Democrat, was named senior advisor, became director of the Office of American Innovation and acted as broker of the Abraham Accords.
This kind of nepotism is not unprecedented. President John F. Kennedy, after all, appointed his brother Robert as attorney general at the age of 35, despite the younger man having no experience in state or federal courts. (Partly in response to this, Congress passed an anti-nepotism regulation in 1967.) President Bill Clinton appointed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to lead his Task Force on National Health Care Reform, with administrative support from White House officials; because she was unpaid, like Jared and Ivanka, she was not subject to the 1967 provision.
Trump is especially prone to this kind of appointment, however, because of his brutally simple and exacting requirement of personal loyalty. Early in his administration, he quizzed aides about their allegiance to him compared to previous employers. Mark Esper, who served as Trump’s third secretary of defense, told the Washington Post in 2022 that, in the event of second Trump presidency, Trump and his aides “will make sure that they really get their loyalists into position … they’re going to get somebody in that’s going to do what he wants.”
There is no reason to doubt Esper’s analysis. At the beginning of March, Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, was elected co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She is a communications graduate from North Carolina State University who worked as a television producer before becoming a Fox News contributor, but felt capable of mulling a run for the Senate in North Carolina in 2022.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have also been active as their father’s cheerleaders and proxies. Both spoke at the rally that preceded the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and their motivation was explicit. Don Jr. said of the GOP hierarchy, “this isn’t their Republican party anymore, this is Donald Trump’s Republican party.” Eric looked to the longer term: “My father has started a movement, and this movement will never, ever die … [it] will transcend him, it will transcend all of us.”
Back in 2020, when reelection for the senior Trump seemed a forlorn hope, Don Jr. teased the media with hints of his own presidential bid in 2024, and his name was bruited as a candidate for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania vacated by Pat Toomey in 2022; he had already decided against a senatorial run in Wyoming.
You might wonder if any of this matters. “Blowhard” is part of the Trump DNA as surely as real estate and NYC. But Donald Trump is in a unique position. Since the ratification of the 22nd Amendment, no former president has sought reelection after a period out of office. So Trump goes into the November election knowing that he can only serve for four years. More acutely than most, as a result, he must think about his succession and legacy. How does “Trumpism,” if one can even identify such a coherent movement, continue beyond 2028 and Donald’s eventual departure from the national scene?
The vice-presidential nominee may not be the signpost some expect. While conventional wisdom says that a Trump presidency would be followed by the nomination of whoever had been his running mate, some insiders say Trump would rather watch contenders for the MAGA crown battle it out in four years time. Assuming a Republican victory in November, it may only be in 2027 or 2028 that we start to see just how committed a dynast Donald J. Trump is.
This much is certain: Neither shame nor lack of qualifications on the part of his kin will play any part in his calculations. It’s all in the name.
Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.