Donald Trump Jr., under fire for “outing” the alleged Ukraine phone call whistleblower, doubled down on his description of CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella as a Democratic Party operative who cried “like a little child” when his father beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Speaking at Virginia’s Liberty University to promote his new book, Trump mocked reports that he was the first to name the alleged whistleblower, and he said that a simple internet search would show the political leanings of Ciaramella.
Addressing a student-packed convocation at the school’s 9,500-seat Vines Convocation Center, Trump said, “I magically, with a set of spies, I’m not aware of outed a CIA operative whose name happened to be in the title of the article that I retweeted. Minor detail. It’s in a major publication in the [headline] it had been on the Drudge Report four days before, it was in RealClearPolitics.”
He said that by repeating what he had read, the president’s critics feared that people would look into the alleged whistleblower’s past.
“It wasn’t that they were upset that I outed him, it was that now his name is in the public domain and all you have to do is a little research, and you can see that this is a guy who was [former Vice President] Biden’s guest at a State dinner. This was a guy crying like a little child in the photograph with [Obama-era national security advisor] Susan Rice and her team the day after my father won the election. This is a guy who had deep ties to [former CIA Director John] Brennan and the rest of the leftist deep state that can lie to Congress and have no consequence,” he said.
“Oh,” he added, “this isn’t the humble public servant trying to do good that the media are trying to portray him as.”
Trump is currently on tour to promote Triggered: How The Left Thrives On Hate And Wants To Silence Us. It is ranked No. 2 on Amazon, behind the anti-Trump book A Warning by Anonymous.
Although he was appearing before a friendly crowd, Trump said that many supporters of the president feel they have to hide their support because of the media’s assault on Trump backers.
“The amount of people who reach out to me, that again, I would not have even thought would consider it, say, ‘Listen, man I can’t be vocal.’ Because the media has done a good job of, sort of, ‘Hey if you are a vocal Trump supporter, that’s a problem,’” Trump said.
He has witnessed that on college campuses during his book tour and said that those who come to listen to him face “consequences.”
Trump said, “There is literally a consequence. There’s a consequence to being a conservative, there’s a consequence to being a vocal conservative, and there is a far greater consequence to being a vocal Trump supporting conservative.”
Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr. praised the book and asked where Trump found the time to write it, considering his job with the Trump organization and constant traveling to meet with Trump supporters.
Trump, who runs the company’s international division, answered with a joke. “Unlike Hunter Biden, we were international business people that stopped doing international deals” when his dad became president.
“We stopped doing international deals, so I ended up with sort of a little bit of extra time,” he said, adding, “so, rather than capitalize on it like the other side is able to do, we said we won’t do it.”
During the Obama-Biden administration, Biden’s son Hunter expanded his international business ties in countries that administration was working with, including China and Ukraine.
