49 pages • 1-hour read
Under Siege: My Family's Fight to Save Our Nation
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Themes
Faith as a Foundation for Political Action
In Under Siege, Eric Trump lays out the various campaigns he believes have been waged against his family because of his father’s political beliefs. While he believes that this campaign of lawfare is unjust, Eric relies on faith—in religion, in his family, and in the conservative movement—as the foundation of his opposition to what he views as unfair treatment.
Throughout the book, Eric reiterates his faith in his family. In a structural sense, the cohesion of the family is evident in the choice of author for the two forewords. Donald Trump and Lara Trump are members of the Trump family as well as political figures in their own right. Their presence in the book—structurally placed so that they speak before Eric begins his narration—means that the audience is introduced to Eric’s story via his family. Family becomes the conduit for the book, the reason for its existence, and—as Eric makes clear—the means by which he and his family will fight back against what he perceives to be unjust treatment. Family is a core principal of Eric Trump’s ethos; at the same time, it is one of his key defenses against the forces which seek to undermine his family.
Eric is firm in his declaration of his Christian faith. Eric notes that the public have often questioned his father’s religiosity, to the point where discussions in 2016 asked whether he was “a Christian” (67) at all. Eric makes clear that there can be no doubts about his own faith. He raises his children to believe in Christianity and makes sure to pray with them every night, even if he must do so occasionally via video call. In spite of the pressure placed on him by politics and business, he makes sure to keep this tradition alive, an example of how faith and family are inextricably linked in Eric’s world. At the same time, the broader understanding of faith is an important way in which he remains optimistic in the fight at his father’s side. Throughout Under Siege, Eric talks about the targeting of his family by his political opponents and how this makes him question his faith in his country. While he remains a patriot, his faith in the social institutions that govern the United States begins to falter. A series of Supreme Court decisions in 2024, he writes, restores his “faith in our republic” (181). In this sense, the notion of faith is multifaceted. Eric Trump’s Christianity may never falter, nor would he want his family to lose their faith, yet he cannot help but feel his own trust in the social fabric of his country waiver. Faith is not just limited to religion or prayer for Eric. Rather, it is a more complex idea which involves patriotism and protection, a sense that he and his father are on the right path. In this sense, his religious faith helps him to maintain his patriotic faith. For Eric, religion and patriotism are challenged but maintained, even if the latter may falter more than the former.
By the end of Under Siege, Eric switches his narrative mode. He chooses to end his Epilogue with a reaffirmation of his religious and his patriotic faith, hoping that “may God forever bless the United States of America” (254). But this vision of America which he believes is deserving of divine blessing is one which has consecrated his understanding of family and faith. To Eric, his family has become the protective unit which has successfully repelled the unfair challenges and obstructions to achieving their patriotic goals. He has renewed faith in the system, a patriotism buoyed by his father’s ability to overcome political opponents. He calls on God to bless this version of America as, in 2025, he comes to see the modern America as a vindication of his belief in family, faith, and the country itself. Eric’s view of family and faith is, in a sense, self-justifying. Standing beside his victorious father, however, he feels absolutely justified in taking this view of religion, patriotism, and the importance of family as a way to triumph over adversity.
Opposition to the Trump Family as a Conspiracy
If family and faith are the positive forces at play in Under Siege, then lawfare and the supposed conspiracy against the Trump family is the negative motivation which compels Eric Trump to share his experiences with the world. By opening his story with the raid on Mar-a-Lago, Eric portrays his family as defiantly standing up to a coordinated and relentless attack by their political enemies, echoing the book’s title, Under Siege. For Eric, this raid becomes a neat illustration of the points he wishes to cover later in the book. In Eric’s framing, the raid demonstrates the various and unexpected ways in which the Trump family is targeted. Attorneys are not allowed on the property, he writes, while FBI officers are told to “shoot to kill, if necessary” (15). This framing echoes one of President Trump’s talking points: After FBI documents related to the raid were unsealed in 2024, the then-former president tweeted that the FBI had been authorized to use lethal force, framing this authorization as a deliberate and targeted attempt by then-president Joe Biden to put his reputation and life in jeopardy. Eric reiterates this framing, but in reality, this authorization to use deadly force is a standard component of all FBI search warrants (Goldin, Melissa. “Fact Focus: Trump Distorts Use of ‘Deadly Force’ Language in FBI Document for Mar-a-Lago Search.” Associated Press, 23 May 2024). President Trump misleadingly portrayed this standard language as evidence of a targeted attack on him, and his son does the same in Under Siege. The significance of opening the book with this story becomes clear, as the raid encapsulates what Eric frames as unfair treatment directed at his family. For Eric, the lawfare campaign against his family is evidence of a two-tier justice system which—as the rest of the book describes—is weaponized against the Trump agenda.
Throughout the book, Eric recalls the many ways in which, in his view, his family has been targeted. When he describes how his charity was shut down, for example, he frames this as an absurd abuse of power, one in which the only real victims were the cancer-stricken kids to whom he had pledged his help. A 2017 Forbes article, however, details how Eric Trump’s charitable foundation funneled money into the Trump Organization’s coffers in part through exorbitant fees paid for the use Trump facilities (Alexander, Dan. “How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business.” Forbes, 6 Jun. 2017). This incident, as with many in the book, demonstrates that Eric is not an objective or disinterested observer of his family’s political career. Eric is a polemical figure, emotionally, materially, and politically invested in his father’s success. His discussion of the charity case illustrates the rhetorical techniques he uses to win favor from readers. He speaks of the many children who received help from his charity, but does not discuss the evidence or the legal judgements issued against him. The result is that any legal action against the Trump family is presumed to be corrupt regardless of the underlying evidence.
Eric’s belief that there is a conspiracy against his family fuels his desire for revenge. After two assassination attempts against his father, he feels particularly vindicated in seeing his political opponents as willing to do anything to prevent his family from succeeding. The scarce information available about the would-be assassins (in particular Thomas Crooks) lends itself to the creation of a narrative that serves the Trump family’s political interests. In Eric’s account, televised images of his father’s bloodied face and raised fist become a powerful symbol of his family’s courageous defiance of those who seek to silence them. The images of Donald Trump calling on his supporters to fight is, Eric says, “a powerful display of strength that brought our family and the nation to tears” (219). As per his father’s suggestion, Eric comes to see the best revenge as being his family’s success. The election, then, is not only a personal victory for Donald Trump but a cathartic defeat of the conspiracy against the Trumps.
The Binary Oppositions Underlying American Politics
Under Siege takes a binary view of modern America, dividing the country between two camps: Those who support President Trump and those who are against him. In the political world, the divide is evidently between Democrats and Republicans. On a smaller scale, however, Eric recalls that during the 2016 Republican primary, even the Republicans could be split along binary lines. There were those allied to the old Republican institutions, represented by Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, and those who were willing to ally with the outsider, Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s victory was not simply over the Democrats and Hilary Clinton, Eric suggests, but over those institutional vestiges of the old Republican party which had grown out of touch with the electorate. Following the election, the targeting of Donald Trump becomes another faultline along which Eric sketches a fundamental divide. By the end, with Donald Trump’s victory, Eric believes that his father has defeated his opponents both in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Trump 2.0, he says, means that the Republicans are now “the party of America First, unapologetically committed to Americans first” (250). The statement encapsulates not only Donald Trump’s electoral victory over the Democrats, but his ideological capture of the Republican Party.
Eric views American society as comprised of many, overlapping binaries. Eric’s siblings, Don Jr. and Ivanka, represent two competing visions of American society. Eric uses his siblings as avatars of these competing visions of America, describing Don Jr. as an embodiment of the rural silent majority, someone who enjoys fishing, hunting, and traditional values and who thrives “in the serenity of the wilderness and in the chaos of politics” (30). In contrast, Eric suggests, his sister Ivanka is known for her “her natural sophistication and polish” (31). While Don Jr. must be persuaded out of a hunting trip to a politically tense part of the world, Ivanka is more at home in the lavish parties and refined environments of the urban elite. As such, Eric uses his siblings as shorthand for different understandings of the American experience, framing them as avatars of the divide between rural and urban America. In his siblings, Eric sees the two Americas. Importantly, since they are his siblings, he does not favor one over the other. He loves them both, he says, as he loves both Americas.
The presentation of Don Jr. and Ivanka as diametrically opposed avatars of the American experience means that Eric can present himself as a synthesis of the two. He is, by his own confession, “probably a mix of both of them” (31). In this respect, Eric likens himself to his father, a wealthy businessman who is more at home on the construction site than at fancy parties. Eric goes to great lengths to remind his audience of his father’s more rustic and working-class sensibilities, trying to dispel the idea of Donald Trump as an out of touch member of the social elite. Instead, Eric views both himself and his father as being able to move between the two Americas. This is what makes his father a successful businessman and politician, Eric suggests, and also what makes Eric his father’s true apprentice. Eric is not only the heir to his father’s business empire, but the heir to his ability to cross the divide between the two Americas. Eric may not see himself as a politician or a political figure, but he believes that he and his father possess a unifying ability essential to healing the many divides across modern America.
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