The apple doesn’t fall far from the orange-coloured tree.
Donald Trump Jr. sounded much like his father Thursday while promoting the Trump International Hotel & Tower in downtown Vancouver, describing the building as “beautiful” and brushing off his family’s detractors as “ridiculous” and “disgusting.”
In a one-on-one interview with CTV News, Trump Jr. responded to the local politicians who labelled the elder Trump a racist while calling for his name to be removed from the project last year.
“They should be disgusted by themselves,” he said.
The push to “Dump the Trump” was spurred by the presidential hopeful’s remarks on the U.S. campaign trail, where he proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country and branded Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.
The latter comment he qualified by adding that “some, I assume, are good people.”
Trump Jr. acknowledged his dad’s views are controversial, but said characterizing them as racist makes light of a serious problem.
“To throw it out there like that, it’s a shame. And it’s disgusting,” Trump Jr. said.
“You do a major disservice to the people who are actually afflicted when you throw out nonsense comments like that to try to build a Twitter following or grab a headline in the newspaper, which is what the politicians ultimately did.”
Those politicians included Vancouver City Councillor Kerry Jang, who suggested using the Trump name on the tower would make the building a “beacon of racism.”
Jang stood by that remark on Thursday.
“Overwhelmingly Vancouverites have said please take that name off that building, we don’t want that name on this building in downtown Vancouver, and I hope Jr. takes that message back to daddy,” Jang said.
Trump Jr. said his strong words also apply to Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who stopped short of calling the Republican frontrunner racist but described his comments as hateful.
“Honestly, it’s a little ridiculous and it’s beneath him,” Trump Jr. said.
Politicians weren’t the only ones outraged by Trump’s remarks – they also led to an online petition to rebrand the Vancouver tower that’s been signed more than 55,000 times.
But those people don’t represent the public at large, according to Trump Jr., who insisted the family is not at all concerned about backlash.
“The building’s beautiful, it’s going to speak for itself,” he said.
“We’re sold out, ahead of schedule, months before we’re ever opening at the highest numbers ever in Canada. Do the math.”
The 63-storey Trump International Hotel and Tower will be the second-highest building in the city next to the Shangri-La Hotel when it opens. The project is scheduled for completion in fall 2016.
With files from CTV Vancouver’s Shannon Paterson
