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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   32507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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It seems underappreciated that regardless of how much or how little he was actually involved in raising them, every single one of Trump's kids have seemingly turned out well-adjusted (especially controlling for being raised with absurd wealth), irrespective of their birth mother.

Often enough major politicians' or business magnates' children can turn into embarrassing thorns in their side, maybe going to the press with stories of neglect or outright abuse, of being two-faced and dishonest. Or just being badly behaved and unworthy to fill their parents' shoes. (I'm constantly reminded of Tom Hanks' son Chet as a reminder for how far the apple can fall.)

Somehow he got five kids to adulthood (Barron's got a ways to go but just look at the guy) and no major blowouts, four of the five with kids of their own now.

The first couple steps to having any kind of Dynasty is raising your kids right and making sure they go on to expand the brood themselves so you have a diverse portfolio of possible heirs (tongue in cheek). It'd be worth trying to figure out what the Trumpian secret sauce is.

I think you’re going from the wrong assumption here. Kids and grandkids of Trump have much more in common with stereotypical children of wealth than they do children of celebrities. Confusing the two is a common mistake, but they are extremely different. A child of wealth learns that they have a parachute if they screw up. A child of celebrities learns that attention = survival, and are clearly poised to learn counterproductive lessons.

Speaking of children of politicians as a sort of weird third category doesn’t make sense. Either they are kids of the attention seeking variety (where some craziness is expected) or wealth (where they largely turn out fine). And I think you far oversell the number of crazy kids of wealth. Now I grant you part of that is wealth does better at hiding even after being busted for something (eg the children of the Reuters guy and their nanny). Despite that it’s impressive how relatively few wealthy kid screwups there are.

I think my main point is that Trump, for all his weirdness, apparently has pretty decent genes and can't be a particularly bad parent if his kids are all successful in their own right and are still on good terms with him.

Someone else pointed out Elon's kids as a comparison and, yeah.

Hmm. I was going to disagree, but some back of envelope bayes-rule calculations actually do seem to agree I understated the case so I guess I stand corrected on that front.

Good on ya for doing some math.

I haven't looked to see if there's any reliable research, I'm just kind of going off the general odds that the more kids you have, the higher chances that at least one of 'em will be a screwup.

Kids and grandkids of Trump have much more in common with stereotypical children of wealth than they do children of celebrities.

By comparison with Hunter Biden, though they may not be perfect, they're not as messy. Even The Onion can only mock Eric and Don Jr. for being childish idiots, whereas they had to go from 'Biden won't pardon Hunter' to 'Biden pardoned Hunter'.

I'm not comparing with the Bidens, though. To me that's too much selection bias, of a sort, but there's more than that besides. We should compare Trump's progeny to other business magnates - the original claim from faceh was that Trump is underappreciated for having well-adjusted progeny, and I reply that no no, he's merely doing par for the course. Billionaire kids, near as I can tell, aren't poorly-adjusted all that often. Politician kids, which were lumped in the same category, are not the same category. They are in fact on the spectrum that leads toward celebrity kids, which is definitely not the same category, despite conflation in that same comment! Trump is a businessman who, in the twilight of his life, decided to be a politician (and some think didn't even fully intend to, alleging he expected to lose). That's a very different thing than a political dynasty family. And even then... you know, children of major politicians being an embarrassment is probably still the exception rather than the rule.

The deal with children of wealth is: if they turn out rotten, now it’s everyone’s problem. You never hear about the poor kid who blows a 1k inheritance in a strip club in one night, but the dumb company heir who goes bankrupt brings a lot down with him.

Trump has grandchildren that are probably turning out ok themselves, too. It’s a contrast to Elon Musk’s ki

I'm constantly reminded of Tom Hanks' son Chet as a reminder for how far the apple can fall.

Look, someone had to tell us it was a white boy summer.

That song is unironically a banger if all you want is a party jam. Should pair well with Ye's recent hit single "Heil Hitler," although the vibes are very different.

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