Presidential son Eric Trump suggested Tuesday that President Trump has to “tune out” his criticism so he doesn’t “commit suicide out of depression.”
The president’s third son intimated that this would be a reasonable response for anyone subjected to the type and number of critiques leveled against the president, regardless of recent Trump mental health questions.
“If they weren’t talking about you, you wouldn’t be doing something right and it’s important to keep it in context,” he said during a radio interview on The Joe Pags Show. “Otherwise quite frankly you’d probably end up killing yourself out of depression. But he’s doing a great job.”
It has been widely reported that the White House has a “war room” tasked with delivering the president two daily briefings that only contain positive press coverage of him.
Trump the Younger criticized people “in their marble offices” who are working against the president in his gold office. “It’s the media, the mainstream media, who does not want [Trump] to succeed,” he said. “It’s government who does not want him to succeed… No matter what he does, he’s going to get hit, and listen, I think you have to tune it out.”
“Politics is nasty, it’s the nastiest business I’ve ever seen. No matter what he does, they’re going to hit him on it,” he said.
This is the third viral-ish moment for Eric Trump this summer. He previously attracted attention for saying that Democrats “are not even people” during an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity, and came under fire for allegedly funneling proceeds from a children’s cancer charity to Trump businesses.
In the radio interview, Eric Trump may have been speaking figuratively, but the idea that the president may be prone to suicide over press criticism spotlights recently expressed bipartisan concern about Trump’s mental state, in view of his sabre-rattling over North Korea, comments on Charlottesville and continued impulsive tweeting. Earlier this month, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said that Trump “lacks the stability” to be successful. On Aug. 23, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) said there’s “a growing mountain of evidence that the president has been very erratic” and “has shown a mental instability.”
When Congress reconvenes, three Democratic members of Congress plan to convene an expert panel on how to evaluate the president’s mental health, Scientific American reported on Aug. 16.
