Poor narrative. No one leaves it alone.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s counternarrative is that the Trump family has long lived under siege from government, media and law (though his preferred word is \u201clawfare\u201d). He cites as evidence the two impeachments in the House of Representatives and the many indictments and investigations of his father and the Trump Organization, concerning business records, election interference and classified documents. Put together, he writes with typical Trumpian hyperbole, it is a siege \u201creminiscent of Stalin\u2019s reign of terror in the former U.S.S.R.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has a point to make, especially about the New York case<\/a> involving $130,000 in hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels \u2014 perhaps the weakest of the lot yet the only one to result in a conviction \u2014 but he undercuts it by avoiding the vital arguments and details behind them.<\/p>\n In 2020, President Trump wasn\u2019t merely \u201cquestioning a sketchy, pandemic-weakened election\u201d in Georgia, as Eric Trump asserts; he was demanding that state officials find 11,780 more votes for him, and it\u2019s on tape<\/a>. Eric Trump dismisses the case regarding his father\u2019s \u201csupposed\u201d mishandling of classified documents, accusing the F.B.I. of \u201calmost certainly\u201d planting evidence at Mar-a-Lago. (Adding \u201csupposed\u201d to things you don\u2019t like and \u201calmost certainly\u201d to things you do like doesn\u2019t prove the point.) And though he never stops declaring that the 2020 election was fraudulent \u2014 \u201cWe were robbed,\u201d he writes \u2014 he refers only glancingly to the \u201cmanufactured storm of Jan. 6,\u201d dismissing the protesters as innocents who were just \u201ctaking pictures in the Capitol\u201d that day. Fortunately, others took pictures, too.<\/a><\/p>\n Eric Trump almost seems to relish the siege, in part because, by his account, it thrust him into the arena. He brags about how many subpoenas he has received as a Trump Organization executive (\u201cI am likely the most subpoenaed man in American history\u201d) and emphasizes the leadership role he took in fighting back. \u201cI would lead the company, lead my family, lead our defense against the lawfare,\u201d he writes. He even says he became \u201ca patriarch of sorts\u201d in the Trump family. That is part of his own narrative \u2014 how much he resembles his father, who, according to Eric Trump, calls him the \u201csleeper\u201d among his children, the one who is always \u201cquietly exceeding expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n