KTLA 5 3/12/2017
Donald Trump Jr. made his first political public appearance since his father’s inauguration, taking an election victory lap and growing nostalgic for the campaign trail.
“I thought I was out of politics after election day,” Trump said Saturday, speaking at the Dallas County Republican Party’s Reagan Day Dinner, where he recalled his father’s unpredictable path to the presidency.
“I thought I’d be going back to my regular job. I thought I’d be really excited about it. But once you get a little bit of a taste of that action, it’s hard to leave. You know, listen, deals are still exciting, but when you’re sort of the guy out there 24/7, every day fighting in this thing — it’s like a great fight, the intensity. I don’t miss the politics, I promise. I want nothing to do with the politics, but I miss the intensity of that,” he said, reminiscing about the no-sleep, fast-paced days of the campaign when he paraded around as one of the only surrogates.
He praised his father’s first 50 days in office: “What’s exciting for me, as an American, as a father of five young kids, is I’m watching more take place in two months than I saw in two terms before,” Trump said as nearly 1,000 Dallas County Republicans dined on lettuce wedges in a downtown hotel ballroom.
Trump used his remarks to thank Texas Republicans, who he said, “gave us the funds to go over and win all those other states.”
“We actually raised more money in Texas than we did in New York and California combined,” he noted.
Trump also lamented what he called a societal lack of diversity in thought, sharing some wisdom from his father with the Texas Republicans.
“We’ve done a really good job welcoming everyone, all sorts of diversity, but the only place where there’s a lack of diversity is a lack of diversity in thought — and that’s something we have to change, you have to be able to argue both sides of the coin … That’s something I learned a lot from my father. He’d sort of make you argue the opposite side, even if you didn’t necessarily believe it, just so you could put yourself in those shoes,” he said.
“This notion that that doesn’t exist anymore is very scary, cause what do those people in the real world when they for the first time face real adversity? What do they do if they’re not able to do that? If they’re not able to take some criticism, if they grew up in that participation medal, you know, era that so many of our kids do.”
[Excerpted]
http://ktla.com/2017/03/12/donald-trump-jr-says-he-misses-campaign-trail-at-texas-republican-event/
