As the Trumps continue to face House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry sparked in large part by a whistleblower’s complaint outlining a scheme to shakedown Ukraine, Donald Trump Jr. abruptly tweeted out the supposed, still not formally confirmed name of the initial whistleblower. That tweet came after his dad — President Donald Trump — had been caught on tape suggesting that the whistleblower should be executed and as subsequent concern for their safety continues to manifest. Trump Jr. followed up his initial whistleblower outing with Twitter posts in which he mocked the outrage.
The Wednesday debacle unfolded as Trump Jr. kept working to drum up hype for his new book Triggered, which employs the exact same failed “joke” as its title that conservatives have already repeated ad nauseum and then some. Suggesting that perhaps Trump Jr. just wanted the attention — he made sure to include “#Triggered” in his response to criticism over posting the whistleblower’s name.
He tweeted:
‘I love the outrage about me tweeting an article about the “alleged” whistleblower… also good to know you have other sources confirming. Those thinking I coordinated with The White House to tweet out a @BreitbartNews article haven’t been watching my feed much. Didn’t happen!.. The entire media is #Triggered that I (a private citizen) tweeted out a story naming the alleged whistleblower. Are they going to pretend that his name hasn’t been in the public domain for weeks now? Numerous people & news outlets including Real Clear Politics already ID’d him.’
To be abundantly clear, RealClearInvestigations is pretty much by far the most high profile news outlet to publish the initial Ukraine scandal whistleblower’s supposed name. The majority of the attention to the supposedly successful right-wing sleuthing work has been in ultra-conservative blogs circulating around the internet. As Trump Jr. notes, that includes Breitbart.
Although the Trumps would no doubt love for us to believe otherwise, people are not outraged about Trump tweeting the whistleblower’s supposed name because they’re afraid of the “truth” of their supposed lack of credibility or whatever else. The vast majority of the details in their initial complaint have been confirmed by additional sources at this point. Trump Jr. is simply being brazenly reckless and refusing to acknowledge even a hint of an issue with his behavior.
Check out Twitter’s response below…
