By Dave Mason
The Center Square

After almost a decade of politics, Eric Trump felt it was time to tell his family’s story.

President Donald Trump’s son accused Democrats and mainstream media of a long persecution of his father and their family. He said the mistreatment started the moment Donald Trump reached the bottom of his golden escalator in Trump Tower in 2016. That was the New York City site where Trump announced his first campaign for president.

“They came after us in every way, shape or form,” Eric Trump said, addressing an audience of over a thousand people, who frequently applauded him at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. He was at the Simi Valley site, just north of Los Angeles, to talk about and sign his new, bestselling book, “Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation.”

“Guys, we love California, and we love the conservatives in California. And I love this little group over here,” Trump said Sunday, referring to people chanting “U.S.A! U.S.A!” at the start of his talk in the library’s auditorium. He noted more “Make American Great Again” caps were sold in California than any other state and predicted Republicans would take the state back.

On stage, Trump answered questions from David Trulio, president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. Trulio immediately asked Trump why he wrote the book, and Trump stressed the importance of documenting how others had persecuted his family. He also noted his father felt it was important to pursue the presidency despite that persecution.

“I said on ‘Sean Hannity’ [on Fox], ‘My biggest fear is they’ll try to inflict harm because they’re tried everything else they could to try and take the guy down.’ And they tried to kill him in Butler,” Trump said, referring to the first assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on Donald Trump in 2024. “And they tried to kill him eight weeks later at the golf course.”

“And they killed our friend Charlie Kirk, who’s a dear friend,” Trump said. “And somebody had to tell the world what the siege was because we know the Democrats. They love revisionist history.”

Trump said someone needed to document the story from an inside point of view. “And that’s why I wrote the book.”

As Trump answered Trulio’s questions, he went through the timeline of events. He quickly got to Donald Trump being sworn-in by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at his first inauguration in front of the Capitol.

“My father’s hand came off the Bible on Jan. 20 of 2017,” Trump said. “Twelve minutes later, there was an article from the Washington Post. That’s when the impeachment of Donald Trump begins.”

Eric Trump blasted the two impeachments and 91 indictments of his father, as well as counterintelligence specialist Christopher Steele’s dossier accusing Trump of collusion with Russia. Eric Trump described the dossier and the impeachment that followed it as “the Russian hoax.”

“They raided our home. They raided Melania’s closet. They raided Baron’s room,” Trump said, referring to his father’s wife and youngest son. “They did everything they could to destroy us.

“And I became the most subpoenaed person in American history: 112 subpoenas,” Trump said.

“I became the piñata in that I didn’t have constitutional protections, right?” said Eric Trump, who is executive vice president, along with brother Donald Trump Jr., of The Trump Organization. “I wasn’t in the executive branch. So every time they wanted to get to my father, guess what they did? They went after the company, and they came through us.”

“They wanted to take the Trump name off every single Trump building for doing absolutely nothing wrong other than we decided to question the status quo of Washington, D.C., and the media was behind it, and the DOJ spied on our campaign,” Trump said. “They spied on my father’s first campaign.”

Trump mentioned the FBI raid on the president’s home in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.

As he interviewed Trump on stage, Trulio noted the president’s son wrote in his book that his father was the calmest of everyone in the family as the attacks hit.

“He always had this eerie calm,” Trump told Trulio. “He called me from the hospital at Butler, super calm, totally unfazed.”

Trump, who noted he has no current plans to run for office himself, said his father responds to attacks by fighting back.

“He was always the best when he was under pressure,” Trump said, noting the president’s recent years echo the themes of his books from 1987 and 1997.

“ ‘The Art of the Deal’ was 2016, ” Trump said, referring to the campaign that landed his father his first term in the White House. “ ‘The Art of the Comeback’ was what we went through between 2020 and 2024.”

Assassination attempts on Donald Trump, assassination of Charlie Kirk

Tyler James Robinson, 22, was arrested and charged with aggravated murder and other counts in Kirk’s death at Utah Valley University in Orem. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Oct. 30 in a Utah County court in Provo, and Utah County Attorney Jeff Davis filed a notice he will seek the death penalty if Robinson is convicted of murder.

Ryan Routh, 59, was recently found guilty of all charges related to the assassination attempt on Trump on Sept. 15, 2024 on Trump International Golf Club’s course in West Palm Beach, Fla. Sentencing is set for Dec. 18. Routh was convicted following accusations that he raised a rifle, which led to a shot from agents, a short vehicle chase and Routh’s apprehension on Interstate 95.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired shots at Donald Trump during his July 11, 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pa. The U.S. Secret Service shot and killed the shooter, who wounded Trump’s ear.