As if he’s just trying to fit the bill of a comic book villain or something, Donald Trump Jr. has been revealed to have taken his documented fascination with murdering things to a new extreme recently when, while on a hunting trip to Mongolia, he killed an endangered sheep and then, to top the mess off, got special permission from the government for the kill only after he’d completed it. Perhaps Mongolian authorities were trying to resist some kind of squabble with the Trump administration? Imagine using your privilege associated with Trump Jr.’s status to fly around the world and kill sheep.
Trump Jr., of course, insists that everything is fine and dandy surrounding the trip that he took, which he’d purchased at a National Rifle Association charity auction in 2015, before his father was elected to the presidency — although he does admit that as a protection recipient of the Secret Service, at least a modicum of federal government resources went to his overseas sheep murder romp anyway.
A Trump Jr. spokesman complained:
‘This was a purely personal, father-son trip, which Mr. Trump bought in 2015 at an NRA auction before his father had even announced that he was running for office. No government officials from Mongolia or the U.S. were involved in organizing the hunt… Mr. Trump paid for his trip to Mongolia on his own, flew commercial and timely applied for and secured all required permits through a third-party outfitter — as is standard in the industry. As a protectee of the U.S. Secret Service, Mr. Trump has no say in or control over the security protocols that are deemed necessary and appropriate by the Service.’
Although no government officials were involved in the organization of the trip, it’s a completely bad faith argument to suggest some kind of complete disconnect from the business of politics. First of all — this is Trump Jr. we’re talking about. He neither changed his name nor gave up his incessant, desperate political advocacy on behalf of his dad. Additionally, government officials did end up involved thanks to the special treatment of a retroactive approval to kill an endangered sheep — and although it’s totally unclear what was discussed, he even met with the Mongolian president.
Reportedly, according to the hunting guide that accompanied Trump Jr., he sought to preserve the body as a trophy. He “instructed [guides] to carry the carcass on an aluminum sheet to preserve the fur and horns,” the Daily Beast notes, which is against the custom of dismembering hunted animals at the kill site and leaving scraps in the wild where they can get swept back up into nature.
Trump Jr. has attracted scrutiny for his international hunting before. In 2011, he and brother Eric were photographed “posing with a dead elephant, kudu, civet cat and waterbuck while on a big game safari in Zimbabwe,” The Gothamist reported at the time. There was even an alligator hanging from a noose in the mix of imagery.
These kinds of spectacles seem on par with the most cliched examples of troubling behavior — yet, we’re still supposed to take the Trumps as credible political voices anyway, apparently. Not likely!
