Donald Trump Jr is getting roasted on late night US comedy shows

Donald Trump Jr’s emails on meeting Russian informers have America’s prime time comedy show watchers in splits even as the US President took to Twitter to praise his eldest son, 39, as “open, transparent and innocent”. [caption id=“attachment_3805899” align=“alignleft” width=“825”]  Donald Trump with his eldest son/ Reuters pic[/caption] Donald Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr has quickly turned into first class grub for late night comedy after his rash of emails with a music publicist show him eagerly accepting a meeting with a Russian lawyer last summer in hopes of obtaining information that he was told could incriminate Hillary Clinton. “What do you get when you cross a Russian, an email and an idiot?” - is how Daily Show host Trevor Noah opens on Eric Trump’s email bombshell. “Irony! An email giveth us the Presidency and an email taketh it away !” Noah guffaws as laughter rings across networks mid week after Trump and Co’s return from the G20.

Conan O’Brien leaves it to a slick video to drive home the buffoonery. He has Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin characters in a phone call interrupted by a low IQ third party (Donald Trump Jr) who tells daddy that he’s just given away hard drives from Trump tower to the pizza boy and his Snapchat password to the New York Times.

Stephen Colbert’s punchline is all the rage after the Trump Junior blooper. “I’d like to apologize to Eric Trump. We always thought you were the dumb one. We were wrong,” says Colbert who also interviewed Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the same night. Both these morning show hosts were the subject of personal insults by Trump late June. Scarborough announced on the Colbert show that he was leaving the Republican Party. “Big fat nothing burger” is the other hot word of the week. “White House chief of staff Reince Priebus pooh poohed the latest developments on the Trump Russia links as a “nothing burger” and late night hosts are going to town with it. News wire AP’s Jonathon Lemire and Julie Pace are reporting on how “Trump privately rages” as the Russia scandal returns via his eldest son while comparisons Donald Trump Jr and Fredo Corleone in The Godfather Part 2 are splitting Twitter. In the Godfather film, Fredo is the second son of the mafia don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro), younger brother of Sonny (James Caan) and elder brother to Michael (Al Pacino) and sister, Connie (Talia Shire).

.@TyBurr: Is Trump Jr. our era’s Fredo Corleone, desperate for a little respect? https://t.co/yRd3xVYoeV pic.twitter.com/sYBz5xhXSg

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) July 12, 2017

Now, if you want to plug in to the serious side of this story, it boils down to this: Donald Trump, Jr. is neither a part of the Trump Administration nor did he have a formal title during the Trump campaign. Technically an ‘outlier’ while being ‘family’, this makes him a freelancer and fall guy for the Trump White House. Even if the White House convinces everybody that Eric Trump has no locus either in the current White House or during the Trump campaign, note the names of others who were at the June 9th meeting, details of which Eric Trump has served up for free on Twitter: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law one of the President’s closest advisers in the White House and Paul Manafort - then manager of the Trump campaign. It doesn’t end there - Donald Trump Jr, even if he’s painted as an outsider, forwarded his e-mail chain with Goldstone to Kushner and Manafort with the subject line: “Russia - Clinton - private and confidential.” This meeting happened one floor below Trump’s suite in Trump Tower. And Donald Trump was in office that day. Breitbart, Trump’s favourite right wing newspaper says it all in its Wednesday headline: “Donald Jr, you’re such a ————.”