Donald Trump Jr. had been scheduled to soon begin a speaking tour of Australia… but amid a campaign encouraging a block on the former U.S. president’s son entering that country, it’s now cancelled, for now at least. Organizers described what had taken place as a postponement, though new dates for Donald Jr.’s prospective trek through Australia were not immediately available.
As outlined in a report from the Australian publication The Sydney Morning Herald, visa issues do not appear to have been the clincher that drove the cancellation, as a government source said that Trump Jr. had been granted his papers necessary for entering the country before the dates were scrapped. “It’s his choice whether he comes or not but there is no immigration impediment to him coming,” a spokesperson for the country’s minister of home affairs said.
There is a legal basis in Australia for the national government there to block individuals from entering the country should they be suspected of, among other things, imminently inciting “discord” — which sounds an awful lot like, of course, what Donald Sr. did ahead of January 6 — through there’s no clear indication at this point that the national government would be inclined to activate some of these restrictive provisions against Trump Jr. Tens of thousands have signed an online petition supporting the idea of effectively blocking Donald Jr. from Australia, though it seems that people could affix their names to that effort from anywhere rather than solely, say, Australia itself. Former Labor speechwriter and The Australian columnist Troy Bramston also backed the idea.
Other issues that could have plagued the planned events included supposedly low ticket sales and high costs for security. Ahead of his tentatively scrapped travel, Donald Trump Jr. had complained feverishly about what he characterized as “woke” ideology also seen in Australia. “Woke” targets are, of course, among Republicans’ favorites in the United States, though these political figures have not always been able to meaningfully define the contours of what they’re actually challenging. They use the word a lot more than those about whom they’re so up in arms all the time.
