WASHINGTON – One of the first times Donald Trump introduced his youngest son in public, he painted a picture of a merciless figure who would grow up to be a killer businessman.
Barron Trump was all of nine months old.
“That’s Barron. He’s strong, he’s smart, he’s tough, he’s vicious, he’s violent…all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur,” Trump told the crowd at a Los Angeles ceremony honoring him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 2007. “And most importantly, hopefully, he is smart because smart is really the ingredient. Good luck, Barron. You have a long way to go.”
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As Trump and his wife Melania left the podium, the infant Barron seized the microphone.
“Uh-oh, he won’t give up the mic,” his father exclaimed.
Fast forward to 2025: Barron Trump will turn 19 on Thursday, a 6-foot-7 enigma who’s treated by admirers as a MAGA crown prince. A freshman at New York University’s Stern School of Business, the president’s son commutes from his home in Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan to the Greenwich Village campus downtown by motorcade with U.S. Secret Service protection.
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While he has maintained a low profile in public, he has been credited by his parents for helping connect to the typically apathetic young voters who the former president relied on last fall to win back the White House. Barron Trump encouraged his father to talk to popular bro-centric podcasters like Joe Rogan and Adin Ross and amp up his digital presence on social media platforms such as TikTok, leading his father to declare him the “king of the internet.”
Donald Trump, accompanied by his wife Melania Trump, and son Barron Trump, enters his Election Night Watch Party at the Palm Beach County Convention Center at the Palm Beach County Convention Center on November 5, 2024.
“He was very vocal. He brought in so many young people,” Melania Trump told Fox & Friends, a month after Trump’s victory. “He knows his generation, because nowadays the young generation, they don’t sit in front of TV anymore.”
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Barron Trump: Future of the conservative movement?
While he’s made appearances during a couple of public events such as Election Night and Inauguration Day, Barron Trump has been largely absent from most other high-profile engagements. He was the only Trump offspring to skip the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and the president’s address to a joint session of Congress earlier this month.
Barron Trump gestures during a rally on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second Presidential term, inside Capital One, in Washington, U.S. January 20, 2025.
But his sparse appearances, and even the sound of his voice, have generated intense interest.
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Consider the seconds-long clip of an upcoming documentary series based on Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign that was recently made public. In it, Barron Trump can be heard saying, “How are you? It’s very nice to see you” while greeting someone on Election Night.
That was enough to send the Barron Trump fan base into a tizzy. “He speaks!” exclaimed one eager fan in a social media post. Entertainment Tonight did an entire segment on “grown up” Barron Trump’s voice in the election night footage. The episode also established that Barron Trump had not retained his childhood Slovenian accent inherited from his mother, by contrasting it with a viral resurfaced clip of a four-year-old Barron, saying “I like my suitcase.”
Viktor Knavs and Amalija Knavs, parents of first lady Melania Trump, arrive at the White House with the first family June 11, 2017.
In the clip, which was part of a 2010 Larry King Live interview on CNN, Melania Trump says her son speaks three languages. The first lady’s parents, Viktor and the late Amalija Knavs, immigrants from Slovenia, were a constant presence around Barron as he grew up in New York, Washington D.C. and Florida.
Asked if Barron Trump could speak Slovenian, the first lady’s office said it did not want to comment.
Unlike the usual Trump family practice of maximalist exposure – their last name has been prominently displayed on hotels, golf courses, buildings, water bottles and steaks – Barron Trump has flown under the radar for most of his life. It’s a stark contrast from the very public presence of his other four adult half-siblings. And for good reason – he was still a minor during Trump’s first presidency when his older half-brothers, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, ran the family business and his half-sister, Ivanka Trump, served in the White House.
“Barron seems to be a screen upon which Republicans can imagine and see whatever they want to see in him,” said Elisabeth Anker, professor of American Studies and Political Science at George Washington University.
That was brought into sharp relief last month when the president of the New York University chapter of the College Republicans of America was forced to resign for the way she described Barron Trump.
“He’s sort of an oddity on campus. He goes to class, he goes home,” NYU Chapter president Kaya Walker told Vanity Fair magazine. Her comment did not sit well with the national leadership of the College Republicans of America, who deemed the quote “inappropriate” and something that “does not align with the values and principles upheld by our organization.”
In a letter posted on X announcing Walker resignation, Will Donahue, the president of the College Republicans of America, invited Barron Trump to join the organization and described him as the “future of the conservative movement.”
President Donald Trump takes his inaugural oath with first lady Melania Trump and son Barron Trump looking on at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025.
Asked why Barron was seen as their standard bearer, Donohue told USA TODAY: “We believe that MAGA is the future of the conservative movement, and that the youth will spearhead the institutionalization of Trump’s policies in our politics.”
To Donahue, the Barron Trump effect was apparent by the Gen-Zer’s rightward shift in the 2024 election.
The 60-year-old Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, saw her support in 2024 drop among voters ages 18-24 by 19 percentage points compared with Joe Biden in 2020, when he won the presidency at age 77, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement., one of the leading researchers on young voters.
Barron Trump: Spotlight or privacy?
A president’s children under the age of 18 have generally enjoyed a degree of privacy. Even after their parents leave office, those under 16 get U.S. Secret Service protection under federal law.
But that does not mean the first family’s children are kept out of sight. As president, Barack Obama made stops at his daughters’ high school soccer games with the White House press pool in tow. One of the most iconic images of presidential children features a young John F. Kennedy Jr. peering out of one of the “secret doors” beneath the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
John Kennedy Jr. playing in the Oval Office at the White House, Washington, DC, October 15, 1963.
First children have also often been the subject of ridicule and bullying.
In Barron Trump’s case, first lady Melania Trump has been fiercely protective of her son, writing in her memoir that one incident caused him “irreparable damage.” In 2016, when the youngest of the president’s children was 10 years old, Rosie O’Donnell, the TV personality, shared a video linking him to autism.
“Barron Trump Autistic?” O’Donnell tweeted. “If so — what an amazing opportunity to bring attention to the AUTISM epidemic.”
After years of not addressing the viral post, the former and future first lady clarified in her 2024 memoir “Melania” that her son was not autistic.
Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump-Trump and Barron Trump attend the “The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life” book launch celebration at Trump Tower on October 14, 2009 in New York City.
But the experience of “being bullied both online and in real life following the incident is a clear indication of the irreparable damage caused,” she wrote. The experience also was the catalyst for her “Be Best” anti-bullying campaign during her first turn as first lady, she revealed in her book.
Chelsea Clinton, who moved into the White House with her family in 1993 at the age of 12, had also been a target of bullying comments. She stood up for Barron Trump more than once when he has been the subject of online mockery.
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“Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does -to be a kid,” she wrote in a 2017 Facebook post after a Saturday Night Live writer tweeted a joke about then 10-year-old Barron Trump and school shootings.
Jen Naparstek Klein, a New York-based psychologist who specializes in child and family psychology, said she believes part of why Barron Trump has remained private is to avoid public scrutiny and to ensure his physical safety.
Barron Trump (next to his grandfather, Viktor Knavs) receives a loud ovation during the inauguration celebration for President Donald Trump at Capital One Arena in Washington D.C., on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.
But that hasn’t stopped Trump from shining a spotlight on his son almost anytime he’s in public with him.
“I have a very tall son,” Trump said in introducing an 18-year-old Barron Trump during his January 2025 Inauguration Day, to a standing ovation. “Has anyone ever heard of him?”
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: It’s Barron Trump’s birthday: The ‘King of the internet’ turns 19
