Uh-oh.

Don Trump, Jr., who's always been a bit of a bon vivant, seems to have gotten pranked by a leftist chef in New York – the same one who served up the huge steak dinner to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro as a means of rubbing it in the faces of Venezuela's starving people.

Oh what bad optics – and surprise, surprise, just in time for midterms.

Here's the Miami Herald story reported a a few days ago:

President Donald Trump is no fan of Nicolás Maduro, but his son enjoyed artistically salted steaks Thursday by a celebrity chef who set off protests in Miami for feeding the Venezuelan dictator last month.

Donald Trump Jr. posted a video on Instagram Thursday night that showed him being served steak by Nusret Gökçe, a Turkish chef known as Salt Bae for finishing his elaborate steak presentations with a flourish of salt.

"This happened tonight. Amazing meal with @nusr_et #saltbae #salt#bae," Trump Jr. posted to his verified Instagram account.

Yeah, I'm sure it was an amazing meal.  Steak and a skilled chef have a way of making that happen.  But as they say in modern art, context is everything.  The chef, Gökçe, is the same one who made hay for himself by serving up a big steak pig-out to Maduro earlier, and he's dressed up like Castro in earlier stunts.  He's expressed plenty of left-wing sentiments, and it was obviously his honor to serve Maduro.  Serving the leftists is something he lives to do.  As I wrote here earlier:

Amazing everyone, and not in a good way, Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro has been Instagrammed pigging out on a big prime steak dinner by a Turkish celebrity chef famous for serving $275 meat plates at the Miami version of his restaurant empire.  Maduro was Instagrammed dining from Istanbul.

This makes quite an impression, as he bears responsibility for a nation where the locals are forced to dine on spoiled meat, zoo animals, rats, and family pets, if they can get anything at all, and who otherwise fight with machetes over garbage scraps to avoid starvation.  Millions have fled from hunger alone.  Thirty percent of Venezuela's population makes do on one meal a day, and the average weight loss for every Venezuelan in Maduro's socialist hellhole is now 24 pounds per person, up from last year's 19.  There are people in the country who look like this, which I can't even joke about.

Make no mistake: Maduro took a hit for that publicity-wise, even as he thumbed his nose at the criticism and carried on chowing down.  Angry protests and boycotts were seen roiling his establishments in Miami, which very likely hit his business.  I sure as heck wouldn't eat there, and I love a good steak.

This raises the strong likelihood that Trump Jr. was pranked.  With his business down, what better way for the chef to get it back up than to serve Don Trump, Jr. in order to get the whole thing posted on Instagram and get people talking again?  Somehow, the act of posting that can make Trump Jr. look as insensitive as a rock and like a greedy eater who doesn't care about starving Venezuelans to boot.  Way to go as midterms approach and the critical Latino vote is starting to swing red.  Feed Maduro, feed Trump, associate Trump with Maduro, and watch Trump take a hit at midterms – see how this works?

Trump Jr. needs to extricate himself from this stunt soon as possible, telling the world he didn't know about the prank he was being played for, and do something better for it, maybe by helping starving Venezuelans.  That will minimize any loss on the voter front at midterms and restore the equilibrium.  Trump Jr. has been working very hard to elect Republicans, in Michigan and elsewhere, and we all know he isn't all in for helping commies or restoring respect for dictator-feeders.  The only people he should be making mad are the Democrats.