Jason Zengerle: Donald Trump Jr. is ready. But for what, exactly?

Of all the president’s children, Donald Trump Jr. has the strongest connection to the politics, voters and online disinformation ecosystem that put his father in the White House. What will he do with it?

Donald Trump Jr. pre-records his address to the Republican National Convention at the Mellon Auditorium on August 24, 2020 in Washington, DC. The novel coronavirus pandemic has forced the Republican Party to move away from an in-person convention to a televised format, similar to the Democratic Party's convention a week earlier. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A case can be made that the apex of Donald Trump’s presidency occurred early this year, around the time of the State of the Union address. The Feb. 4 speech to a joint session of Congress began with Trump’s ignoring the outstretched hand of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a pointed snub of the Democrat who, two months earlier, led his impeachment. For the next 78 minutes, Trump boasted about his accomplishments, like building an economy that “is the best it has ever been”; dished out red meat to his base, such as pledging a national ban on late-term abortions; and theatrically dispensed favors, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom for the conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh.

On that February evening, the first reported death from the coronavirus in the United States was more than three weeks away, and it appeared as if Trump had bent the office of the president, its trappings, the institutions of government and, indeed, all of American politics to his will. After he finished, Pelosi, standing behind Trump on the House rostrum, dramatically ripped up her copy of his speech. It was a made-for-meme moment — and at first, the meme’s natural constituency seemed to be the left, for whom Pelosi’s paper-shredding provided a rare flash of emotional gratification in an otherwise dark time. (The next day, the Republican-led Senate would vote to acquit Trump of all the impeachment articles, mooting the Democrats’ monthslong crusade.) But then Trump’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., had an idea.