Donald Trump’s children think he’s an incredible dad
CLEVELAND — After a tumultuous start to the Republican National Convention, and a day dominated by charges that Melania Trump’s speech Monday included plagiarized passages, Donald Trump’s adult children made their debut on the convention stage Tuesday night. Once again, the campaign attempted to present a softer, more human side of the brash New York billionaire turned GOP presidential nominee.
Up first was Tiffany Trump, Donald Trump’s youngest daughter, who has joined her father only rarely on the campaign trail and had never before publicly spoken on behalf of her dad. A recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the 22-year-old is Trump’s only child with his second wife, actress Marla Maples, and spent most of her childhood in California — not in New York, where the rest of the Trump family lives.
Tiffany was clearly interested in refuting the widely held view that her relationship with her father is distant. She spoke of the childhood report cards she still keeps because of “sweet notes he wrote on each and every one of them” and how, when someone close to her died, the first call she received was from him.
“Donald Trump has never done anything halfway, least of all as a parent,” she declared, describing her father as a “natural-born encourager” who as taken “pride in all that I’ve done so far, no matter how big or small.”
While Melania Trump spoke of her husband’s kindness in her prime-time speech Monday night, Tiffany was the first to include personal anecdotes about the GOP candidate and his relationship with his family.
She told the audience that she often looks forward to introducing him to friends, “especially ones with preconceived notions, because they meet a man with natural charm and no facade,” Tiffany Trump said. “In person, my father is so friendly, so considerate, so funny and so real.”
The Trump campaign has begun relying on the candidate’s children as character witnesses for the real estate mogul, who is viewed negatively by an overwhelming majority of voters.
Donald Trump Jr., the candidate’s oldest son, who has emerged as a close adviser to his father during his presidential run, followed his sister to the stage, where he championed many of his father’s campaign’s proposals, including tougher immigration laws.
But the younger Trump also sought to humanize his father, casting him as an everyman who has never forgotten his roots as a kid growing up in the outer boroughs of New York City. He spoke of how he dreamed big and took on Manhattan real estate developers and ultimately “changed the skyline of New York.”
He also played up his father’s connection to working-class people, insisting that he was never one to hide behind a desk. “He spent his career with regular Americans. He hung out with the guys on construction sites… pouring concrete and hanging Sheetrock,” Trump Jr. said. “He listened to them and he valued their opinions as much and often more than the guys from Harvard and Wharton, locked away in offices, away from the real work.”
And he talked of how his father would take him and his siblings Eric and Ivanka to construction sites to give them a hands-on lesson in the family business from the time they were old enough to walk. He described his father as his “best friend” and “mentor.”
“I am the son of a great man,” Trump Jr. declared.
_____
Related slideshows:
On the ground at the RNC Convention – A photo report >>>
Melania Trump in the convention spotlight >>>
Convention floor erupts when no roll call taken to change rules to unbind delegates >>>
Demonstrators protest outside the RNC >>>
