Is it possible to make great art without an intense and profound sense of self-awareness? I can think of no human I would rather have this conversation with than Donald Trump Jr: artist, critic and large adult son. Or as his own Twitter bio has it: “EVP of Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization, Father, Outdoorsman”. And: “In a past life, Boardroom Adviser on The Apprentice.” It is quite simply THE great American résumé, easily clearing the likes of Thomas Edison or Roman Roy.
Anyway, back to Don. “I wish my name was Hunter Biden,” this bearded, faux-jawlined meritocrat told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Wednesday night, discussing Joe Biden’s son. “I could go abroad and make millions off my father’s presidency. I’d be a really rich guy.”
Preach. Thing about Don Jr, though, is he’s got way too much integrity to do that. He’s not about taking leg-ups, selling out, sucking globalist dick and playing to stadium crowds – he’s about the small venues. He’s about what got him into this gig in the first place. Which is to say: he’s about the music.
And so to the US president’s son’s review and promotion of Kanye West’s new album – one of those sentences that would have been inconceivable to type four years ago, but which now is one of the more normal occurrences in any given news cycle. And yes, this column will feature a separate item about Lindsay Lohan’s “platonic and respectful” friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
But for now, we hold our focus on Don Jr, who has a huge amount of time for Kanye. And why wouldn’t he, given Kanye is a dedicated supporter of his father’s presidency? Last year, Kanye used an entertainment show appearance to wear a Maga hat and suggest that slavery was “a choice”. He has since rowed a little way back on that one, apologising for the way some people felt about it, although not for the comments themselves. But as he said of President Trump: “I feel that he cares about the way black people feel about him, and he would like for black people to like him like they did when he was cool in the rap songs and all this.” You know, THAT time.
But Kanye’s still wearing the Maga hats and vocally supporting Trump. And he has a new album out, entitled Jesus Is King, which has a pronounced Christian bent. Unfortunately, this latest creative offering has received something of a tepid response from the critics.
Or, I should say, from most critics. Because it takes a strong guy of true integrity to stand alone, and that guy is Don Trump Jr. As the president’s son wrote of the opus: “Kanye West is cracking the cultural code.” Wow. I don’t know what it means, but it genuinely sounds exactly like a lot of music criticism. Maybe we’ve found the one thing Don Jr can do? I don’t know a whole lot about the industry standard, but I do know he already reads like Paul Morley.
Anyway, Don, go on. “Kanye West’s new album, Jesus is King, is the epitome of fearless creativity,” Little Trump continued, “and ‘dangerous, unapproved’ ideas.” Crikey. Are those quotation marks around “dangerous, unapproved” intended to denote a certain irony? I certainly took them as heavily sarcastic, to the point of having to make the airquote gesture while I was reading.
But closer analysis of Don’s writing style suggests he reaches for random quotation marks like his daddy reaches for random capital letters, or random pussies. So we’ll have to take Don at his word: namely, that an embrace of Christianity is “dangerous, unapproved” in America – even if it is a country the rest of the world mostly views as comically, auto-parodically God-bothering. So much so that Donald Trump – DONALD TRUMP – has to pretend to be religious to be president of it.
“Leftists always try to silence those who are speaking truth,” Don Jr continues about Kanye West, a man famously stifled by the oxygen of publicity. Languishing in the obscurity of multiple media platform appearances and marriage to cultural unknown Kim Kardashian, West must somehow fight the system that battles daily – hourly – to censor and withhold recognition from him. Anyway, back to these leftists. “They’re waging a war on our family and our culture,” Don concludes. “Kanye is a pioneer.”
So there you go. Not only is Don Jr the most groundbreaking and important music critic since Lester Bangs, he is the very best son since Jesus – who did, let’s face it, kind of benefit from nepotism himself.
Lohan invades the Middle East again
The number of nations to which Lindsay Lohan has added to the gaiety thereof continues to grow. The latest beneficiary is Saudi Arabia, in the Hollywood star’s ongoing expansion into the Middle East. According to several reports, now confirmed by Lohan’s father, she has a close and mutually respectful friendship with noted local dismemberment fan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Like many other important players in the region – Israel, Iran, Qatar – Lohan’s most recent gig was running a Mykonos beach bar for an MTV show. Before that, she was resident on our own shores, enlivening the night of the EU referendum with a series of tweets lambasting places she thought had made the wrong electoral decision. “Sorry #Kettering,” ran one of these gems, “but where are you?” Local MP Philip Hollobone was so angered about this that he raised the matter in the House of Commons. It fell to Chris Grayling to respond from the dispatch box. “Linday Lohan,” said Grayling, “as a star of teen and child movies – a very entertaining actress at the time – hasn’t necessarily fulfilled her professional potential.”
Takes one to know one, Chris.
Indeed, who should be on the backbenches now, while Lohan is being private-jetted around the world by MBS, who reportedly gave her a gift-wrapped credit card? Please don’t get the wrong idea, though. As Lohan’s endlessly grasping, deadbeat dad Michael explained to the New York Post at a charity ball this week: “They are just friends. Lohan has a lot of powerful friends in the Middle East, because she is huge out there. Lohan met MBS because of the work she has been doing in the Middle East. She is working to help people in the region, particularly refugees.”
Right. Is this the thing where she said she wanted to have LOHAN-branded spas “and refugee camps”? Or is this the thing where, in the course of her work as an energy-drink ambassador, she handed out cans of said drink in a refugee camp in Turkey? Or is it the thing where she proposed wrapping the needy in $3,525 Hermès blankets?
It’s unclear. What her father will say is: “She has a platonic and respectful relationship with MBS, nothing more.” Asked if he was concerned about his daughter spending time with someone who, barely a year ago, was responsible for the kidnap, murder and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Michael was dismissive. “None of that has been proved to be true,” he stated. Inaccurately.
Still, maybe we seek out qualities in our friends that we ourselves lack. For instance, Lindsay Lohan has done community service in a morgue. And Prince Mohammed definitely should have. Meanwhile, he has imprisoned members of his own family. And Lohan must have wished she could have. Looked at that way, it makes total sense – so what’s not to adore about this unlikely buddydom?
