The Apple Does Not Fall Far From the Tree: Donald Trump Jr.'s Nasty Internet Presence

Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son and loudest mouthpiece of Trump dynasty patriarch Donald Trump, has a long history of replicating his father’s ostentatious internet presence.

But who is Donald Trump Jr., really? How is he different from Trump Sr.? 

We took to the internet (namely, Don Jr.'s own internet presence) to find out what makes the eldest Trump son think, now that’s something I want to post for the world to see. The results are as upsetting as they are unsurprising.

1. He’s a fan of alt-right memes.

It’s no secret alt-right nationalists are particularly fond of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. We’ve chronicled the rising tide of, as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton put it, “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it” individuals operating under the guise of “white nationalist populists” who’ve been championing Trump’s campaign and flooding the internet with offensive and obnoxious memes. We’ve also chronicled their deplorable (yes, it is okay to use that word) bullying tactics, typically levied against social justice warriors and liberal commentators on internet message boards and through nameless Twitter accounts.

Considering this, it’s not surprising that low-key white nationalism propaganda permeates Donald Trump Jr.’s social media accounts—a subset of the internet marked by subtle misogyny, alt-right memes and poorly constructed jokes. Like father, like son.

And like his father, Trump Jr. has a difficult time understanding when it’s fitting to repost images on social media. Here’s a pro tip: check to make sure it wasn’t first posted on an anti-Semitic, white supremacist message board, as Trump Sr. found out when he retweeted and later modified an image of Clinton with a six-point star and a pile of cash that was originally posted on 8chan’s alt-right watering hole “/pol/.”

But alas, this sage advice was lost on Trump Jr., who one week ago posted a photoshopped image on Instagram featuring himself alongside self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone and Alex “Orlando was a false flag” Jones. The image, captioned, “The Deplorables” as a giant “f— you” to Clinton, also featured Pepe the Frog. For the uninitiated (of which Trump Jr. claims to be), Pepe used to be a harmless internet meme, but has since been appropriated as a de facto mascot by the alt-right movement.

2. He’s thinks it's fine to attack people fleeing their homes due to warfare.

One of the ugliest social media posts of this election came courtesy of Trump Jr., when the campaign surrogate compared Syrian refugees to Skittles.

The tweet garnered scores of critical remarks for its flippant take on a complex situation, but in the same vein as Trump Jr.’s need to just Google his damn memes already, the history behind that image is telling.

As it turns out, not only did the photographer who took the Skittles photo, David Kittos, tell the BBC that Trump Jr. used the image without permission, Kittos himself is a refugee.

"In 1974, when I was six years old, I was a refugee from the Turkish occupation of Cyprus,” Kittos said. “So I would never approve the use of this image against refugees.”

Even more telling, as Vox explains, the comparison Trump made in his tweet is “akin to the bad apple spoiling the bunch or Nazi propaganda that compared Jews to toadstools.” The Intercept traced the origin of the quote, finding that the concept dates back to a 1938 book by Julius Streicher, who published one of Hitler’s favorite papers and called for the extermination of the Jews in WWII. Seriously, guys, Google.

As the controversy continued, even Skittles had enough of Trump Jr. Mars, Inc., the company that makes the rainbow candies, released a statement over Twitter:

3. He’s a fan of killing majestic animals for sport.

Though not technically posted by Don Jr. himself, images of him and little bro Eric hunting big game resurface on the interweb on a cyclical basis. That doesn’t make it any less shocking to see images of Trump’s sons smiling broadly over the corpse of a dead leopard in Zimbabwe (a big cat classified as “vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature).

The last time the images reemerged, Trump Sr. had just accepted the Republican Party nomination. Defending his sons against the 62 percent of Americans who think trophy hunting should be banned, Trump Sr. called his sons “hunters,” and said Eric Trump considers the activity “on par” with golf.

So the family so many people want to represent our country considers slaughtering a beautiful animal the same as a round of golf.

4. He’s a fan of boobs (but maybe not when attached to a “herd of mothers”).

I’m sure you’re dying to know Trump Jr.’s opinions on boobs and the women who have them. Lucky for us, Buzzfeed cataloged a (since deleted) tweet wherein he divulged just what he thinks about the former:

“If ur a boob guy this whole lactation thing is amazing the sports bra the wife is wearing is losing the containment battle!!!” Trump wrote. But it seems while Trump Jr. is certainly into the impact pregnancy has on a woman’s physical attributes, he could do without the annoying things women do when they get together, such as, you know, talk.

Well, what else would you like mothers to talk about? 

Yes, it’s possible the only thing more offensive and absurd than Republican nominee Donald Trump’s internet presence is that of his son. It looks like we can expect Don Jr. to continue the family tradition of Making the Internet Hate Again.