American Thought Leaders - Eric Trump Opens Up About How Relentless Attacks Impacted Him and His Family

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

How did the last nine years change Eric Trump? How did the second son of President Donald Trump react to the assassination attempt on his father’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania? And does he plan to run for political office in the future?His new memoir is titled “Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation.”“It’s the thousands of stories behind the scenes of how they try to dismantle our family and the greatest political movement in American history,” Trump says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

They wanted to see our family out of business. They wanted to see us bankrupt. They wanted to see my father in jail. They wanted to see me in jail. Then they had 91 indictments. I became the most subpoenaed person in arguably American history. They took his mugshot, you know, and then they tried to kill him. They tried to kill our family.

They tried to kill the MAGA movement. And two weeks ago, you saw what they did to Charlie Kirk, right? It was the same thing. They wanted to silence that voice. How did that affect the family itself? It almost hurt. And it's all the game. It's not a fun game.

It's not a nice game. But it's a game. In this episode, I sit down with Eric Trump, Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization, to discuss his new book, Under Siege, My Family's Fight to Save Our Nation. I believe in this country. I love red, white, and blue. I love our First Amendment. I love our Constitution.

We have to stay the dominant superpower of the world. You do need good people. You better have people like Donald Trump. They can't silence us the way they thought they could silence us. They thought they could just remove his voice. with, you know, a $1 bullet. They were wrong. Do you have any aspirations for political office? This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick.

Eric Trump, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders. It's great to be here, guys. So your new book, Under Siege, let's dive right in. Your family has been under siege for some time. This is something that's very prominent in the book. What about yourself? Like, what is your kind of key moment when you realized things had changed your vocably? Yeah. I'll never forget my father handed me the company and, you know, Toney, I'm going to Washington, D.C.

You know, I want you to run everything. I never realized I'd be the one person that didn't have constitutional protections. You know, the President of the United States has constitutional protections. You know, I didn't. And I became the most subpoenaed person in arguably American history. I got 112 subpoenas in a very short period of time. And these are like big subpoenas, right? From Senate, from Congress, from the biggest AGs in the country.

country, DA's in the country. They wanted to see our family out of business. They wanted to see us bankrupt. They wanted to see my father in jail. They wanted to see me in jail. They wanted to see the Trump name off of every building around the globe. They wanted to break up our relationships. They wanted to break up the family ties I have with my siblings. They wanted to break up his relationship with Melania. You know, they raided our homes. They tried to impeach him. They took us off of Twitter and Instagram and X. You know, they weaponized the DOJ. They spied on his campaign. They made up the Russia hoax. They made up the Russia collusion. They made up the dirty dossiers. They took him off the ballot in Colorado. Then they took him off the ballot in Maine. Then they had how many indictments,

91 indictments in Fulton County, and in deep left in New York City and in Washington, D.C. They took his mugshot, you know, and then they tried to kill him. And that's what they tried to do to our family. They tried to kill our family. They tried to kill the MAGA movement. And two weeks ago, you saw what they did to Charlie Kirk, right? It was the same thing. They wanted to silence that voice. And that's what understhesias. That's what the book is about.

It's the thousands of stories behind the scenes of how they try to dismantle our family and the greatest political movement in American history. How did that affect the family itself? I think it probably turned us into rocks to tell you the truth. I mean, it probably desensitized me.

I remember the first time I got a subpoena. And like, it almost hurt. And honestly, you know, Ten subpoenas in, it's like, yeah, here we go again. Like, I know the game, and it's all the game. It's not a fun game. It's not a nice game, but it's a game. And you start compartmentalizing it as exactly that.

It's evil. You have sick people on the other side. You have people who wanted to destroy this country. You had people who wanted to destroy a man just because he had differences of opinions. First, they tried to laugh at him, mock him. You remember that from the White House correspondent. on the center and so many others. And, you know, then they tried to silence him, right?

They, again, stripped him off of social media. I mean, Boca Haram, the Ayatollah, the Taliban, you know, Hezbollah. They all had Twitter accounts, but guess who couldn't? If the 45th president of the United States, you couldn't have a Facebook account, they were writing my wife letters. You know, if you talk about Donald Trump, you know, on YouTube, we're going to throw you off. And then they exerted physical violence on him after they couldn't get him with legal lawfare. And it was a crazy battle. And it's a crazy battle. And it's a battle that we

won against all odds. And again, it's really what the book understage is about. Can you tell me about one kind of instance where, you know, it just seemed very, very dark? Maybe that's maybe that you chronicle in the book that's memorable. I sat next to him every day in the trials in New York. And I remember they stood up and read 34 indictments, which were just bogus. The judge was corrupt. His daughter worked for the other side. The whole, he was gagged. I was the only person who wasn't gagged, so I was on the steps of the courthouse every day,

yelling and screaming about how rigged the whole trial was. And I remember after 34 felony convictions, he turned around, shook my hand, we walked out together, we hopped in the car, and we were actually going to a fundraiser. We were in court by day. fundraising by night. We're, you know, campaigning by night. And I remember as soon as we got in the car, he looked at me. He goes, I don't know how, but we're going to win. I don't know how, but we're going to win. And he wasn't just talking about the court case, which we had overturned. We won it. But the overall election, right? I mean, you had every press member in the back of those courtrooms. And they were giving him a zero percent chance. And it's funny. In his early life, he wrote, you know, the art of the deal. Then his second book was the art of the comeback. You know, talking about, obviously, his business career in the 90s when everybody thought he was down and out. And it's like the perfect parallel, right?

I mean, this was the art, it was the art of the comeback. No one would ever thought a guy who was just charged with 91 felony convictions for doing nothing wrong, but because you had a system that was totally weaponized against you could ultimately become president. And not only did he become president, won every swing state, right? It won the popular vote. Every state in the nation went to the right, meaning, you know, attack to the right in terms of voting. we picked up places that we had never I mean we picked up 11 counties in California that had never been

Republican before that went Republican Miami-Dade which hasn't been one in 37 years we won by 11 percent I mean it wasn't like a baby victory it was like the greatest you know I'd use a different word but because we're on TV greatest butt kicking in the history of of the world and um you know you want to talk about the art of the comeback that was uh that was the true art of comeback. There was a great foreshadowing in his early life when he named that book to exactly where we sat, you know, a year ago. You know, talking about the art of the comeback, when he got up in Butler after, you know, he was shot and said, fight, fight, I mean, I don't know. It's very difficult to describe. Tell me about that time, like, about your experience of that from

the outside. So I took a lot of heat about six weeks before Butler, I said, listen, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to inflict bodily harm. They tried everything, right? First, they tried to laugh, laugh at him. Ha, ha, ha, he can never make it. You know, he's not a serious guy. Remember Obama was saying he's not a serious. It's coming from a guy who was a community organizer, give me a break. Like, he never built anything in his life. And he's saying that, you know, Donald Trump isn't a serious guy. And, you know, and then obviously they tried to silence him. and then all the lawfare wasn't working. And I said, listen, you know, the next logical course of events is violence.

That's what they do. You know, when they lose the narrative, they resort to violence. I mean, that's what happened to Charlie Kirk. And I called it right. I mean, I called it, I called it right. And I called on Hannity. And I got absolutely shelled. You know, everybody, he's an alarmist.

And then sure enough, obviously, six weeks later, you know, Butler. And then, you know, two months after that, you know, what happened to the golf course? some, you know, about a year after that was obviously what happened to, you know, to our good friend. But, um, no, there's difficult times. Difficult times when you lose the narrative, you know, resort to violence. And that's exactly what the left has been willing to do. And, um, it's crazy. It's crazy the times that we live in. And never did. I think that the country would get to this point. At the same time, I can tell you universally, people are sick and tired of the, of the games and nonsense. And they're all seeing it. And I think that's why

you've had the mass exodus from the Democratic Party in this country. I, I think It's why in a four-year period of time, you turned every college kid in this nation from, you know, having been indoctrinated by every teacher and tenured professor and been taught revisionist history and to literally, you know, solidly being in our camp. And the pendulum has swung in ways that I think most people in most countries probably can't even comprehend. And, you know, I'm very proud to have played a, you know, a big part in that. How big an impact do you think what happened in Butler?

on 2024 on the election? I'm massive. I mean, you know, when I, when I saw the hand in the air, I thought to myself, hey, we just won the election, right? Like, you know, people aren't going to stand for this. And people know the radical left for who they are. You know, they're not hiding. The radical left isn't hiding who they are anymore. We know exactly who they are, you know, they're the ones who will call you a fascist, yet sit on a rooftop and all black, you know, holding a sniper rifle, you know, and shoot somebody who's peacefully exercising their First Amendment, right? I mean, to me, that's what fascism looks like not.

not the person speaking on the other end of it. And again, the bullets are only flying one way, hence Steve Scalise, my father twice, Charlie Kirk, what they almost did to Kavanaugh, and so many others, right? It's, they wanted to lead our voices. They don't want guys like me on that stage. You know, they don't want guys like me doing events like we're going to do today.

They want us in their basement. They want us doing effectively what Joe Biden did during 2020, where he didn't leave his basement. He wasn't heard from, you know, we didn't see a chance if that's our playbook. I mean, Hillary outraged us in 2016, 5 to 1, right? If we weren't loud and slightly un-PC and spoke from the heart, you know, and stood on every tractor with a bullhorn in every single swing state as we did and spoke at every church and every house and every picnic that we possibly could,

no chance we would have won, right? And they realized that. And I think that's why they want to make sure that you don't go outside and you don't assemble in large crowds and it's exactly what we can't allow to happen. We have to be more vocal than ever right now. And I think we are, I think we are, and I think people are realizing again

exactly who that party is. And, you know, hence the fact that 50 states, again, swung to the right, and we won the popular vote, and we won every swing state by a major factor, I think people are solidly coming into our corner right now. You know, if I may, you know, of the two older brothers, you seem to be the more low-key, low-key one. But in 2024, you seem very active.

Do you have any aspirations for political office sometime in the future? I'm one of those guys that doesn't need to be in Spotland. I've run our company for a very long time. I'm very good at it. I love work. I love capitalism. I love hotels. I love real estate. I enjoy politics. It's not my first love. Frankly, I detest half the people in politics because I think most of them are freeloaders

who've never actually accomplished anything. And, you know, the person who's never signed the front of a check is writing legislation that's going to apply to every business and every person in our country. The person that doesn't know the first thing about health care is making decisions for the lives of millions of people.

It doesn't seem to compute. You see all these, you know, 20-year-old kids who get into politics, i.e. Joe Biden, and they're in politics for 50 years, and then they become president, you know, and you wonder why our country is totally dysfunctional, you know, under their leadership when they've never seen an outside perspective. Their entire lives have been dependent on checks from the government for making yes, no votes, right? But it's, it's, I dislike that system. I'm far from shy, but I can also turn off the public spotlight. Oftentimes I like working behind the scenes and getting to an end goal without ever being seen. And certainly when I have to turn it on, I do. I mean, listen, I introduced my father at the, at the R&C, right, in front of hundreds of millions of people.

I'm no, I'm no stranger to the stage. I did thousands of rally events. But also, I was the first person to call him up on, you know, the day that we won on November 6th, early in the morning. We still hadn't slept and said, you know, pops, I love you to death. Congratulations. We won the Super Bowl. You know, it's been the greatest honor of my life to stand on the stage. But I'm going to get back to our company.

I'm going to get back to work. There's no more place for me to run. There's no more events for me to do. You got the Big W. The country's in great hands. You know the business will be in great hands. You go do what you do best and I'll go do what I do best. And in instances like that, I'm happy to turn it off and go back into the shadows.

And I enjoy being able to do that. So I'll share something briefly. Like I had people call me up prior to 2024, you know, ask that question, hey, people want me to run. And I bet there's people who have told you that as well. But, and my response was, you know, we need people who are consequential who know what's what and who probably don't like politics very much. So how do you respond? I'm not asking you to run, but my question is, you know, is that something you would consider?

Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't roll anything out in the world. And the ecosystem is beautiful. And I think what I'm learning, I mean, I certainly learned this first time, but we were truly under siege first time. I think the second time, it's like, I'm watching my father make transformational change. I mean, look how, military recruitment under Biden was the worst that's ever been in the history of our nation. One month later, like, everybody was applying. Everybody wanted to be in the United States military.

There was patriotism again. So there are certain things that, I mean, you can just make transformational change on, you know, if you're a real leader and you do it the right way. You know, forget about all these career politicians to say, I'm going to go into D.C. And I'm going to make a difference. Most of them don't, and they fall prey to, you know, kind of. of Washington, D.C. mob, but listen, I would never rule anything out. What I can tell you is, I think it's given us a great voice. I think we've all developed a great voice. We had a voice from the business world, and we had a voice from the number one reality TV show. I was on the

apprentice for seven years. You know, we had some confidence. We had some backbone. And then all of a sudden we got to politics. And I think we developed a real voice and a real comfort on that stage. And real backbone, right? I mean, this stuff requires real backbone as they try and literally and figuratively kill you in every aspect of your soul and your company and your family and your marriage and everything else. And so I think it, I think it armored us in a unique way. And I think I could do it. I think I could do it.

But the question is, do you want to? And, you know, we've seen the greatest parts of politics. We've certainly seen the worst parts. We've definitely seen the worst parts. Worse than probably most can ever imagine, hence the whole point of the book Under Siege, telling all those stories. But I never rule anything out. I believe in this country.

I love red, white, and blue. I love our First Amendment. I love our Constitution. We have to stay the dominant superpower of the world. And you do need good people. And you better. You better have people like Donald Trump who will set everything aside, set aside his wealth, set aside his fortune, set aside his family, set aside his company,

you know, to do the unthinkable. there's not a lot of courageous people out there truly of the Fortune 500 crowd and very few of them would say listen I'm going to sacrifice all of it to run against 16 Republicans who actually know a damn about politics which which we did not and then have to run against somebody like Hillary Clinton you know one of the great political dynasties of modern times you know only in the off chance of being able to to win at a five to one financial deficit, self-funding your whole campaign, like, give me another billionaire who would agree to those terms. Zero, right? I mean, these people gamble on probability,

and I think traditional sense would say that your probability was probably not very good under those odds, right? If you're lying that up and say, okay, you have to run against 16 Republicans beat them, you have to then beat the Clinton family at a five-to-one deficit with the entire media hating you, how many other billionaires would have taken that, right? Hence the reason you get Joe Biden as your president versus getting Warren Buffett. At that said, you have to have great business leaders, people who can offer transformational change, and I'd love to see many more of them. And if the stars ever lined, and that was the right calling for me at the time, you know,

I'd consider it, I guess. Just very briefly, you're donating some of the proceeds from the book to Turning Point in the memory of Charlie Kirk and just tell me very briefly about that and why yeah what's the whole point of under siege right I mean exactly what they did to Charlie I mean Charlie would have been the final chapter of that book had the book not come out three days before you know his assassination and they want our voice gone they want it off that stage and we can't allow that to happen turning points incredibly important and independent voice is incredibly important and so yeah I'm going to give a proceeds of the book you know you know a nice percentage over over to turning points

so that their mission continues and they can't silence us the way they thought they could silence us. They thought they could just remove his voice with a $1 bullet. You know, they were wrong. They can't do that. And in fact, it's a law of unintended consequences that the exact opposite is happening. I think our voice is stronger than it's ever been right now. And just again, super briefly, we're filming here at Clay Clark's Business Conference and how is it that you happen to be here. Well, it plays a great friend of mine. Yeah.

I've been to this event one or two times before, and it's amazing. So, honor to be here, honored to be with a great friend, honor to be with great people. It's fun to be in Oklahoma. Well, Eric Trump, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. Thank you all for joining Eric Trump and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Yanya Kellick.

Thank you.