Win or lose, Donald Trump’s weird boys are pacing in the wings

Are Donald Trump's henchmen a barbershop quartet of Blackbeard pirates or a set of better-groomed Ned Kellys? Dr Lee Duffield finds out.

It came to notice on global television at the Republican National Convention, during the anointing of Donald Trump: both adult-age sons were strangely in uniform. Was it the dark suits? Or the aggressive mien? Or, actually those nuggety black beards?

Modern-day Blackbeard pirates?

The beards are a link to others of the kind, two in particular: JD Vance, Trump’s nominee for Vice President, naturally also prominent on the big night at the Convention, sometimes said to apply a little eyeliner to round off the look; and Lachlan Murdoch, son of that other billionaire, Rupert, and leading publicist for the team, as CEO of the radical-right mouthpiece Fox News, who alternates between the team beard and a clean shave.

It's a barbershop quartet that has no call for a razor. The look stands for Generation X, two of the group born in the X time frame of 1965-80 — Murdoch in 1971, Donald Trump Junior in 1977. The others have been catching up, the younger Trump, Eric, and the nominated Vice President of America Vance, both dating from 1984.

What might this systematic preening be all about? For older X-ers, it might even require a little black rinse to get the jet-black effect. If this is what they do for symbolism down at the rough end of the corporate world, it is not just a matter of appearances. All four are chosen successors of billionaires manoeuvring to run the world and make fresh piles of money from it, and each old-young man has been striving to fill his successor role.

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What will the world get from this troupe after Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch have gone?

The Trump boys are joint Executive Vice Presidents in the Trump Organisation, an organ of storied wheel-and-dealing, occasional scandals, bankruptcies and lawsuits — great training ground in the family business. Both are enthusiastic backers of the father’s political campaigns and his reactionary program built around massive tax savings for people like themselves.

Vance is the only one who did not start with a silver spoon in his mouth, substituting over-drive in the ambition stakes, getting to Yale, getting into the finance world, making a narrative of his underclass backdrop, sold in a successful book. His opponent for the Vice Presidency, Tim Walz, a fellow mid-Westerner, accuses him of betraying plain folks and their way of life.

Murdoch the media man has delivered raucous support for the Trump project through Fox News. He means to follow on with his father’s money-making formula, to service a highly prejudiced audience segment with vindictive and blatantly partisan material. Nothing actually fact-led, they remain “sceptical” about climate change and underwrite Donald Trump’s insistence that he won the 2020 Election.

Murdoch and the Harris interview on Fox

Lachlan’s way was demonstrated when Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris took the dare and talked to the Fox audience on 17 October, meeting Lachlan’s “interviewer”, Fox’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier.

The man, although well shaved – in fact, affecting a tightened, almost botox-like visage – was a definite player, no mid-way journalistic interlocutor and in the Gen-X mode: same vintage, from 1970, same fixed opinions, same drive for control, no place for opposition.

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He has his own paragraph here due to trying to make the occasion about himself, not her, as a “broadcaster” venturing to argue with the talent, not interview them. There was no analysis in his approach, he did scraps of issues in the tabloid way. Over-prepared, shuffling papers to the point of anxiety, with themes from the Trump campaign, he popped up ready videos and graphics seeking to score a point.

One was a “gotcha” quote from Harris in the past, endorsing “use of taxpayers’ money” for undocumented migrants to get sex change operations in gaol. She was able to tell that Trump in office had done the same, that it was mandated in law and that the video he aired was, in fact, an ad the Republicans had been running at a cost of $20 million — some demonstrable overkill.

Kamala Harris, as a poised and forthright lawyer, made sure to get across several main points, especially that Trump was unbalanced and unsuitable for office. Baier, if he could not talk or shout her down, as he tried, persisted in running interference to the end. He started on Trump’s issue – immigration – and kept at it through close to 40 per cent of the 27-minute event.

Probing the motivation for these trimmed and styled Ned Kellys of the media, politics and business can get complicated and tedious. Checking their backgrounds and behaviour provides a clear starting point and simple answer: just a hard and relentless drive for money.

Amongst Dr Lee Duffield’s vast journalistic experience, he has served as ABC's European correspondent. He is also an esteemed academic and member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review and elected member of the University of Queensland Senate.