U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- A report at Business Insider asserting that Donald Trump Jr. “might weigh a run to take over as the head of the National Rifle Association as a way to stay involved in politics,” was dismissed as “fake news” by the younger Trump in a tweet, but it still set off a firestorm as other online news sources picked up the initial report and ran with it.
At the same time, Trump Jr.’s tweet ignited a fury of reactions on Twitter, with more than 10,800 “likes,” 2,000 retweets and at least 127 “Quote Tweets.” Many of the replies to Trump’s initial denial were snarky at best.
Aside from the social media sneering, some observations from other news and opinion outlets raise serious issues, not the least of which are NRA’s current legal troubles, and at the center of this storm is longtime Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, the man who would ostensibly be replaced by the president’s son.
I love and support the @NRA and have been a longtime member, but I don’t want Wayne’s job. This story is total fake news.
PS: While you're here, if you're not already a member, you can sign up to join the nation's oldest civil rights group below!https://t.co/gM51MFUqwN pic.twitter.com/lh6cnHpdgO
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 4, 2020
As noted by Newsmax, “LaPierre…is presiding over a tumultuous time at the NRA, which has been hit with infighting and legal battles, particularly with the state of New York…The NRA strife and legal troubles might be an avenue for declining support for LaPierre, leaving Trump Jr. a potential path to becoming its new leader”
Raw Story had this to say: “The National Rifle Association is in deep distress. The New York Attorney General is trying to completely shut it down. There are reports of massive accounting and cash irregularities, including lavish lifestyle payments for its top brass.”
A story appearing in The Independent, a UK-based publication, observed, “Taking over the NRA might also prove more of a headache than Mr. Trump Jr is willing to take on; the organization has been wracked with infighting and legal battles for the better part of a year.”
And Mediaite weighed in, noting, “The NRA has struggled with allegations of impropriety in recent years, including a lawsuit filed this year by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) claiming executives including Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre had taken inflated compensation packages. In September, former NRA Executive Director Joshua Powell, who the NRA fired in January, published a book blasting his former employer, saying it had fueled “a toxic debate” around guns.”
But a report posted at Yahoo News quoted an unidentified source with apparently close ties to the Trumps stated, “Don is just not getting involved in that pissing match.”
And in his Twitter message, Trump Jr. stated emphatically, “I love and support the @NRA and have been a longtime member, but I don’t want Wayne’s job. This story is total fake news.”
The younger Trump is widely known to be an enthusiastic hunter and shooter. He has visited the NRA’s annual conventions, stopping to chat with various vendors while handling and examining different firearms on display. That fact, alone, could easily lend credence to the story initially put forth by Business Insider and picked up by so many others.
AmmoLand News reached out to NRA for a reaction but did not receive an immediate reply.
But here is the most important question: What would a Trump Jr. run for the top administrative post at NRA really accomplish?
The executive vice president is elected by the 76-member Board of Directors, not the millions of NRA members. Currently, LaPierre appears to have the support of a majority of directors, if not unanimous backing; NRA has always been at its best from behind circled wagons and past experience has demonstrated that when the organization is under attack, insiders set aside their disagreements and unite. For the younger Trump to take the NRA helm would mean LaPierre would either have to step aside or be turned out of office by a majority of the board. That does not appear likely.
While Trump Jr. might offer a different face at the head of the embattled gun rights group, he would enjoy no “honeymoon” with the media or the NRA’s political foes. They would go for his jugular, perhaps even more viciously than LaPierre’s, simply because of his last name. Already, in its report, Raw Story felt compelled to write, “The president’s eldest son has been known for years as a vile ‘big game’ hunter, spending countless sums of money to literally slaughter animals, some endangered, in Africa and other locales.”
As the Independent noted, for the younger Trump, this would become a headache he doesn’t need.
Only a day before this Trump Jr. story broke, Mother Jones ran a lengthy piece declaring in its headline, “A More Extreme Gun Rights Movement Is Emerging in the NRA’s Wake.” The article discussed last January’s huge rally of gun owners in Richmond, Virginia, and what that could mean if the NRA is replaced.
“The rally was a bellwether: the sudden downfall of the nation’s most powerful gun group and the rise of more radical pro-gun organizations and militias seeking to take its place,” wrote Mother Jones’ Matt Cohen. “Since 2016, the NRA has seen a steady decline in its ranks. Meanwhile, there’s been a boon in membership for more extreme groups like the VCDL and the Second Amendment Foundation, which recently filed a number of lawsuits challenging state gun control laws, and the National Association for Gun Rights, which paints itself as a more conservative alternative to the NRA.”
SAF could hardly be called an “extreme” organization, unless one considers using the Constitution to challenge restrictive state and local gun control laws as somehow extreme. According to founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, SAF is responsible for about 80 percent of successful gun law litigation, occasionally partnering with NRA and/or other rights groups including the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. SAF was recently profiled by AmmoLand News here.
However, when such allegations are leveled, it is important to keep some things in perspective. Many people looking to stir up yet another NRA-related controversy suggesting Trump Jr. might make a run at LaPierre are often the same people who look at any group, or individual, sticking up for the Second Amendment as bad.
For them, it has been observed, the Second Amendment is a “loophole.”
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
The news media now wants to start picking on Don JR.. to make sure they stop him from getting any good press stories, thus trying to stop him of any possible future political office runs.
The liberal press has such a hate for the name Trump they will spread all kinds of gossip and they could care less if there is any truth to the story as long as it keeps putting the Trump name in the toilet.
I think the media has things confused between President Trumps son and “president elect bidets” son. Which one would jump at the chance to make money like LaPierre????
NRA has always been at its best from behind circled wagons. That’s all they know. No plan to expand or return rights taken. NFA 1934, GCA 1968, 1986 GOPA.
The Hearing Protection Act and Constitional Carry stuck in the mud behind circled wagons.
FOPA
Firearm Owners Protection Act.
With the hated Hughes Amendment passed by Charles Rangel with no floor vote.
More Republican Representatives voted for it than Democrat Representatives, and it was signed into law by Reagan.
Hughes and Rangel were bad, but, as usual, the Republicans aren’t much better.
The reason no more full auto firearms are not allowed into the registry is because of Republicans.
FOPA had been NRA’s number one priority since my father got McClure and Volkmer to introduce it in 1979. They finally got a chance to pass it (though watered down from the original) in 1986 and they were pushing hard for it. At the last minute, Hughes tagged on his machinegun freeze amendment, and Charlie Rangel slammed it through on a bogus voice vote, using his power in the Chair to claim it passed, and close the door behind it. His objective was not the passage of the Hughes Amendment, but to poison FOPA, so that Republicans and the NRA… Read more »
I do blame Republican politicians for not supporting the 2nd Amendment.
Of all the things the NRA does wrong, I don’t blame them for the decisions Republican politicians make – the politicians have free will.
Too bad he didn’t start and lead the “2nd Amendment Coalition,” in 2017 like his father promised (just before the 2016 election).
Comrade Klashnikov’s grandson would be a good choice.
Can you expand on that – not sure I understand.
Gawd, they cant stop lying.
My two cents. Mother Jones is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Communist party. Loudmouth Matt Cohen (who wrote the article) is there to promote the idea that “IT’S THE JEWS WHO WANT YOU DISARMED” (The Tennessee Jew Boy wants you heavily armed and well trained). Cohen’s real job is to get ordinary Americans to hate Jews. Allen Gottleib is a Patriot but let’s not forget the real Godfather of the movement. Aaron Zellman, he told Us why we need them….. Say, when will “we the people” adopt this phrase?? “IF we hand in our guns to the government… Read more »
Isn’t is curious that, for a free people to defend their freedom from tyrannical government, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Meanwhile, tyrannical government sits there and, supposedly in a constitutional way, tells us exactly how the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, for good reasons of public safety, to be legally infringed?
While Alan Gottleib is certainly a patriot, he is above all, self first. He took over the organization, JPFO, from Aaron Zelman, when he died, and used it for his own gain. Enough so that many of the original writers and supports of the JPFO bolted and formed their own Jewish gun rights group, The Zelman Partisans. While they are not as active as they once were, they are still my go to group when it comes to things involving guns and Jews and the nation of Israel, whom I support, and would stand with in the same way that… Read more »
That’s an unfair characterization pigpen51. After Aaron died, there was a succession plan in place, but his immediate successors were not healthy, nor were the finances of the organization. After a couple of deaths and medical retirements, JPFO was in dire straights, and on the brink of collapse. Alan Gottlieb stepped up and offered JPFO a home under his organizational umbrella, in company with SAF, CCRKBA, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, and several smaller organizations focused on issues other than guns. Several friends and colleagues of Zelman, balked at the idea, fearing that Gottlieb would water down JPFO’s message and… Read more »
You pretty much can’t believe much of anything these days regardless of which side it’s coming from.
What rifle is that? Can anyone tell?
Perhaps Springfield’s new ‘2020’?
Looks like a Cadex Defense, CDX Lite rifle.
Look like Creedmore to me.
https://www.cadexdefence.com/products/cdx-precision-rifles/precision-rifle-lite/
Perfect! He’ll fit right in with all the other thieves at the top of the NRA. If there is any family who knows how to work things so that they personally come out ahead of the folks they are supposed to be helping and supporting it’s the Trump clan. The Trump presidency never came through for gun owners they way they promised and Bozo junior would just continue the trend. And save your comments about me being a commie or socialist cause I’m not. If you were a business person would you let Trump hold your money?
To read your post one would think you were talking about the “Biden Crime Syndicate! Their theme song should be “Money For Nothing And Checks For Free!” With apologies to Dire Straits!
He is talking about the biden crime syndicate, he’s just not levelheaded enough to realize it.
Levelhead is correct when he wrote that Trump never came through for gun owners the way he promised. I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but I understand why some firearm owners did not vote for him in 2020. It may have cost Trump the election (lots of firearm owners in the battleground states and the margin of loss, with cheating, was small). Some firearm owners have had enough of Republican politicians pandering to them to get their vote and then turning their backs on them. They realize “the Democrat candidate would be much worse,” but they are pissed… Read more »
Maybe you can show us proof that gun owners cost Trump the election. You might be dumb enough to think like that, but the rest of us aren’t.
Hello Vern, Gun owners didn’t cost Trump the election. Trump faced an uphill battle – media and big tech largely controlled information that many Americans received. Then there was massive voter fraud in Biden’s favor. I suspect you are aware of those things. Even with that headwind, I believe Trump could have won, but he didn’t because of Trump (certainly not because of gun owners). Voting is anonymous (you know the reasons for voting and not voting can’t be “proved”), but I can give you very rough estimates that I believe are close enough to have a discussion: Roughly 52,000,000… Read more »
From what we have seen, read and heard both on media and local, the media made an all out assault on the American people. Those assaults were to create more hatred and confusion than has ever been put on this people in all of our history. The left are all about fraud, anything that can wring out even one more vote that will put them over the top. But because the left are so dishonest and insecure they rely more on cheating and anything else that will get them their utopia. But utopia bought by every evil manipulating means will… Read more »
What? You wrote:
“You can believe there was no fraud if you want”
I specifically stated there was massive voter fraud in Biden’s favor.
Vern, You wrote: “You keep trying to pass yourself off as a conservative, but something about you just doesn’t pass the smell test.” I think what you are smelling is a belief that: Rights specifically protected by the 2nd Amendment should not be infringed; and Government should be smaller, less intrusive, more efficient, more honest, and less expensive. Crazy stuff, huh? I believe those two things even if: The person trying to pass yet more gun control laws is Donald Trump; One of the consequences of avoiding an even bigger, more powerful, more corrupt, more expensive government is that ammo… Read more »
O K, so we do agree on some things. I have to admit that Trump isn’t a politician, that’s why most of us voted for him in the first place, he thought along our line of thinking. I believe his son knows far more about guns than Trump Sr. does. As someone who doesn’t know much about guns and can’t see the benefit of a bump stock I can see why he didn’t like them. You know what? I know all about bump stocks and I don’t think they should be in the hands of some people out there that… Read more »
Vern, I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. I did not throw him under the bus. I believe there was massive voter fraud in Biden’s favor. I don’t apologize for Trump. Gun control has been one of the top 10 issues in American politics (for many people) for a very long time. Anyone who runs for president should educate themselves on the matter. Trump had vast resources available to him: Pro Second Amendment organizations Republican Party leaders (many from “gun” states) His own sons Research analysts The fact that he is not personally a “gun guy” does not excuse… Read more »
A wrote a response – it is awaiting approval (probably due to length).
Vern,
My original response was approved. See two comments above.
Falls into the same foolishness as the TEAMSTERS, when they finally got to put J Hoffa Jr in as president of their Union, Corporate Lawyer, never worked as a Teamster, living on Daddy’s reputation, only thing it did was stopped government investigations, they now had somebody inside to find a way to get the money out the back door!!!!!!!!!!