Donald Trump Jr. questioned President Joe Biden’s mental fitness and downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in a freewheeling speech at Washington and Lee University on Saturday.
A student who saw Trump Jr.’s stump speech in Iowa said the former president’s son hadn’t altered the remarks that he usually delivers to a conservative crowd.
“Almost beat-for-beat it was the exact same speech as he gave to a pro-Trump rally in Iowa,” said Washington and Lee senior Connor McNamara.
Trump Jr.’s speech in Lexington was scattered and in turns comedic and disparaging. He particularly slammed Biden’s mental acuity, suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was more coherent during his recent interview with Tucker Carlson.
“You realized very quickly that there’s not a single subject imaginable that our sitting president could compete with him on,” Trump Jr. said.
He also said Hamas would not have attacked Israel under a different president.
Trump Jr. struck a very different tone on Ukraine aid than the speaker who preceded him: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. While Youngkin emphasized the need to stand up to Russia, Trump Jr. railed against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to approve more aid for Ukraine.
The former president’s son also went after another presidential family member: Hunter Biden.
“I have a feeling that if Don Jr. was smoking crack a lot… it probably wouldn’t be swept under the rug,” Trump Jr. said.
Trump Jr. said conservatives don’t receive equal treatment from the “mainstream media” and the judicial system.
He repeated a false claim that Jan. 6 rioters were penalized more severely than those detained during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
The Associated Press reported in 2021 that “dozens of people charged have been convicted of serious crimes and sent to prison” following 2020’s protests. At least 10 had received prison sentences of five years or more.
That wasn’t the only exaggerated claim Trump Jr. made during his speech. He also said some states allow children as young as three and four years old to receive gender reassignment surgery.
AP also fact-checked that claim in April. The claim originated with a viral map of states’ anti-transgender laws that was misrepresented by social media users. Medical professionals don’t allow gender reassignment surgeries until people become legal adults, with rare exceptions for minor teens, the AP found.
At one point, Trump Jr. described a transgender athlete as an “it.”
Trump Jr. came to Virginia as one of the headline speakers for Washington and Lee’s 28th Mock Convention. The mock political nominating convention, billed as the most accurate of its kind in the country, predicts the presidential nominee for the out-of-power party every four years.
This year, students simulated a Republican convention and nominated former President Donald Trump. But the event is nonpartisan and meant to engage Washington and Lee’s entire student body.
That’s why some students questioned the provocative nature of Trump Jr.’s speech.
“It was too deep into the conservative conspiracy theories for the wrong audience,” W&L senior Emma Conover said. “Wouldn’t it have been better to just say, ‘[Trump Sr. is] a great dad?’”
Eli Staubi, who is vice president for Washington and Lee’s College Democrats chapter, was unimpressed.
“Fifteen percent of what he said was substance. Everything else was exaggerated jokes,” he said. “It seems like Mock Con brought him because of his name, rather than actually being a representation of the Republican Party.”
But Amy Coffman, a W&L parent who came from Texas for the event, said she was pleased with the caliber of speakers like Trump Jr.
“I thought he was a very dynamic speaker,” she said. “He was funny at a lot of times and very easy to listen to.”
Updated Feb. 9 to correct name and affiliation of Staubi.
