Trump’s kids were once his strongest surrogates — now they’re tanking

Donald Trump is counting on his adult children to sell his campaign to millennial voters. However, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump’s recent media missteps have had the opposite effect.

On Friday, Donald Trump, Jr. made a controversial remark on a Philadelphia radio show. Attempting to criticize the mainstream media’s cozy relationship with Hillary Clinton, he said “They’ve let her slide on every indiscrepancy, on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of the thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now.”

That sounded like a Holocaust reference to some (very bad) and a Holocaust *joke* to others (even worse). He later made a pseudo-apology, calling the remark “a poor choice of words, perhaps.” No kidding.

Even Ivanka, the image of a savvy businesswoman and thriving young wife and mother, ran into trouble last week. What stumped Trump’s sharpest surrogate? Cosmopolitan magazine, a publication that preaches feminism and gives dating advice that should only be taken as satire. A Cosmo interviewer pressed Ivanka about her father’s past comments about working women in contrast to his new plan to ensure six weeks of paid maternity leave. Ivanka got defensive and cut the interview short.

All of this comes in the wake of the Sept. 3 campaign ad featuring Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka staring blankly into the camera. This drew some scathing “Children of the Corn” comparisons on Twitter.

The uproar about what’s in the image is important, but one also wonders about what is NOT in the photo — Tiffany Trump. Did she not make the cut for the photo shoot? Ouch. She’s an accomplished young woman who spoke in support of her dad at the RNC. Her absence is noticed, and frankly just weird.

Trump is rising in the polls, and his grown kids need to stay sharp as Election Day draws near. Hillary might not have won us over, but Trump’s outreach efforts have fallen flat.