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The Alabama Republican Party celebrated the re-election of Donald Trump Thursday night in Birmingham with a “Trump Victory Dinner” featuring Donald Trump Jr.
Trump Jr. recounted numerous stories from the campaign trail from his father’s “badass” reaction to an assassination attempt to Trump Jr.’s daughter Kai deciding to speak at the Republican National Convention.
He also spoke on a range of issues that have been a focus of his father’s second term in office, including the cuts to USAID programs and the federal workforce, keeping transgender women out of women’s sports and the decision to implement massive tariffs on countries around the world.
He also repeated the Trumps’ longstanding claim that the 2020 election was stolen; however, Trump Jr. put a positive spin on the four-year break in his father’s presidency.
“I want to thank Joe Biden because the last four years was the wake-up call that America actually needed,” Trump Jr. said. “When you think of where we are today, the cabinet that we have today, that could have all been gone. All the Democrats had to do in 2020 was not cheat, not lie, and not steal. Then you would have had four more years of Trump and then Pence would have been a presumptive nominee, probably would have lost and, like, that was it. The Trump presidency would have been a lot of the same cabinet, people that were sort of the self-appointed President, the people who were just going to kick the can down the road.”
The latest news from his father’s administration is Wednesday’s “Liberation Day” tariffs that include a baseline 10 percent tariff on almost all countries and higher rates on many others. Trump Jr. painted the tariffs as a “short-term pain” toward building America’s long-term future and criticized past politicians for being unwilling to focus on long-term stability.
“You see the stuff with tariffs and, you know, guess what: it had to be done,” Trump Jr. said. “We haven’t had fair trade in decades. They’re reciprocal tariffs, which means we’re doing to them what they’re doing to us, right? So they’ve been doing it to us and we’re just the one big dummy that does it. Whether it’s NATO, whether it’s the Ukraine we’re talking about; as long as America’s funding it, they don’t get anything for it.”
Trump Jr. appeared to announce a treaty deal between America and Argentina made Thursday in which neither country will levy tariffs on each other. Argentina had originally been subject to a 10 percent baseline tariff.
“So I saw that, I guess my father was with President (Javier) Milei of Argentina today and he’s the first, no-tariff reciprocal treaty between two countries,” Trump Jr. said. “That seems to make sense. But I guarantee you, I know my father pretty well, the people who come to the table to figure this out will fare much better than the guys that are trying to hold out, because we don’t have a choice.”
The stock market was in freefall Thursday following the tariff announcements, with the largest drop in the DOW since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Stocks are expected to continue to fall today as China announced its own retaliatory tariffs of 34 percent on imports from America. Trump Jr. downplayed the drop in stock prices.
“Guess what? It may take more than a couple of days, but you see that with everything, right,” Trump Jr. said. “The stock market is down and, you know, three days later it’s back to normal and they make a big deal out of it.”
Trump Jr. also spent some time discussing the party’s push against transgender individuals, specifically keeping transgender women out of women’s sports. At one point, Trump Jr. recalled a hunting trip with his son in Tanzania last summer, claiming that the local people there had never heard of such a thing.
“I started literally asking them about these things through a translator just to see the response and they literally thought I was the funniest human being in the world,” Trump Jr. said. “I was like, no, this is actually—well how come it doesn’t happen and it’s nonexistent here? Again, it only happens in Hollywood and New York and all this stuff—I feel like this is a learned behavior and not necessarily something that otherwise happens.”
The Trumps have faced criticism in the past for big-game hunting in Tanzania with photos surfacing online of Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump proudly displaying a cheetah they presumably killed, and Donald Trump Sr. holding the severed tail of an elephant. Trump in 2019 signed documents allowing the import of trophy lions for the first time since lions had became listed as a threatened species. He also lifted the ban on importing elephant trophies.
Trump Jr. addressed recent concerning trends for the party including a loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race where Elon Musk notably dumped $25 million and a race in Florida where, although the Republican candidate won, results showed a 20-point swing in favor of Democrats.
“That’s because our guys are happy, we’re watching TV,” Trump Jr. said. “We’ve got to make sure that the Republican Party is energized without just Trump at the top of the ticket. We have to get involved down to the dog catcher, because the left has figured out how to weaponize each and every step of the political process, each and every position within our school boards.
“I mean, that could be the number one thing we do is take over our school boards … Because they have rainbow-haired lunatics, trans activists on the school boards to make sure they’re indoctrinating our children. They’re capturing them at an early age, and in many cases, destroying lives.”
About 50 to 100 people stood outside the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center before the start of the event in protest. Trump Jr. floated the idea that they might be paid protestors before thanking them for showing that “I haven’t lost my touch.”
The event also featured a recorded message from U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville and remarks from ALGOP chairman John Wahl.
