Opinion | How Donald Trump Jr. Conquered the Republican Party

In 2022, shortly before the midterm elections and the unofficial start of the 2024 presidential campaign, the conservative activist Christopher Rufo traveled to Maine to appear on Tucker Carlson’s Fox Nation streaming talk show.For the previous two years, he was a frequent guest of Mr.

Carlson’s.He usually did his hits — on the evils of critical race theory, or the plague of “trans indoctrination” — from his home outside Seattle.

This time, he was excited to meet Mr.Carlson in person.

When Mr.Rufo arrived at the Fox host’s rustic studio, after a cross-country flight and a 90-minute drive from the Portland airport, he discovered someone else in the Maine backwoods: Donald Trump Jr.It was a perilous moment for the Trump family.

After Jan.6, Donald Trump had become persona non grata in elite Republican circles.

(When he officially began his 2024 presidential campaign after the midterms, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post buried the news on page 26 under the headline “Been There, Don That.”) Many conservative leaders appeared ready to swing behind the presidential candidacy of Gov.Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose promise of “competent Trumpism” — all the right-wing policies and red meat, none of the baggage — was striking a chord.

That certainly seemed to be the case with Mr.Carlson, who hosted Mr.

DeSantis on his show at least six times between September 2021 and the midterms; he didn’t have the former president on once.Mr.

Rufo, meanwhile, was advising the governor on how to combat liberal teaching about race and gender in Florida’s schools.At Mr.Carlson’s Maine redoubt, Mr.

Trump Jr.never brought up his father or Mr.

DeSantis or the presidential campaign.But Mr.

Rufo assumed that was “the subtext of the visit” — that Mr.Trump Jr.

was there to keep prominent conservative figures like him and Mr.Carlson in the former president’s camp.

Mr.Trump Jr.

greeted Mr.Rufo effusively and complimented him on his work.

The three m...