Donald Trump Jr. turned up at an Atlanta law school to honor his business partner, and the students there drowned him out.
Students at Emory University School of Law jeered Trump Jr., 48, a partner at the venture capital firm 1789 Capital and the son of President Donald Trump, as he moved through one of the campus buildings on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026 — one day after Democrats captured control of the House and the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“The country has rebuked you guys! The country has rebuked you,” one person yelled as Trump Jr. made his way through one of the buildings. Another heckler shouted, “We have the House and the Senate!” Others chanted, “Shame on you!”
A Secret Service agent appeared to motion for the crowd to quiet down, to no effect.
A Ribbon-Cutting That Went Sideways
Trump Jr. came to the campus to support Omeed Malik, the co-founder and president of 1789 Capital, whose name is being added to a building at his alma mater at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, according to an unnamed source. The visit reportedly caught students off guard, because they had no advance notice of his attendance. Malik answered the shouting students by raising his middle finger, as seen in the video.
Malik, an Emory law graduate and a Trump fundraiser, helps run 1789 Capital alongside fellow executives Chris Buskirk and Rebekah Mercer. Trump Jr. took a job at the firm in November 2024, days after his father won back the White House.
What Raskin Found Uncanny
The firm’s growth since Trump Jr.’s arrival has drawn intense scrutiny. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, opened an inquiry in late August and wrote that the firm had developed “an uncanny ability” to identify companies set to benefit from Trump administration actions.
The firm’s lawyers rejected the claims as “unsubstantiated and emotional aspersions” and said Raskin mischaracterized its deals. They disputed that 1789 Capital took the online marketplace PublicSquare public, noting that PublicSquare went public through a merger with Colombier Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company Malik led. The firm says it welcomes legitimate oversight but would not be pressured into handing over confidential records. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, in their investigation of 1789 Capital, accused the firm of “insider political influence and thoroughgoing corruption”; the company has denied the allegations.
The rare-earth start-up Vulcan Elements has attracted $65 million in private capital, including from a venture firm backed by Donald Trump Jr. In November 2025, the company won a $620 million conditional loan commitment from the Defense Department and an additional $50 million from the Commerce Department. Democratic lawmakers had already named such companies in conflict-of-interest letters.
The Line That Silenced Swanton
Trump Jr. spent the closing days of the campaign on an election-eve blitz through Ohio and New York for Republican candidates, many of whom lost. He arrived on Air Force Two for a rally in Swanton, Ohio, on Monday, Nov. 2, opening for Vice President JD Vance as part of the vice president’s final push in his home state, outside Toledo near the Michigan border. He walked out to Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold,” stumped for gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Jon Husted, and attacked Democrats over transgender issues, communism and socialism.
He then ran through a list of reasons Democrats are dangerous and said, “They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to make Ohio a state,” before moving on to statehood for Washington, D.C. Ohio has been a state since 1803. The crowd, which had cheered his earlier lines, went quiet. Journalist Aaron Rupar posted video of the remarks, which drew nearly 5 million views on X.
Ohio voters ousted Husted the next night in favor of former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, and chose Democrat Amy Acton over Ramaswamy for governor. His New York stop was for GOP House candidate Kailee Buller, who lost her bid to unseat Democratic Rep. John Mannion in the Nov. 3 midterms.
Vance wrote a postmortem on the losses — “The reason we lost is the war” — and Trump Jr. reposted it the morning after the election with four words and three emoji: “Every word of this is 💯💯💯.” By that afternoon the post had drawn more than two million views.
“The Iran war is largely what shifted voter sentiment and caused this. It spiked fuel prices and changed their minds,” Trump Jr. said in comments shared by TheBlaze on X. He credited his father’s administration with record-low poverty and crime and a secure border, and said the war hit voters at the gas pump. Republicans who deny the war’s role he called “disgusting, frankly.” President Trump has not backed down, telling Fox News that people support his Iran policy but were not willing to accept the short-term cost of higher gasoline prices. “If I had run in the election, we would have won. We just couldn’t transfer that love to the candidates,” the president said of the midterm losses.
Vance and the Pope Question
In a separate case, hecklers interrupted Vice President JD Vance at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia on Tuesday, April 14, as he answered a host’s question about Trump and Pope Leo XIV’s disagreement over the Iran war. One protester accused him of genocide and of killing children, and a second voice from the audience accused the administration of genocide in Gaza. Vance credited Donald J. Trump with a peace agreement in Gaza, blamed Joe Biden and the last administration, and cited the administration’s humanitarian aid in Gaza, Thailand and Cambodia. The event was part of Turning Point USA’s “This is the Turning Point Tour,” a college campus junket whose listed speakers include Erika Kirk, Donald Trump Jr. and Savannah Chrisley.
