Donald Trump’s youngest son, and the only child he shares with Melania Trump, has largely remained out of the public eye to the same extent that any child of a former president might. Well, until recently. Barron Trump, who just turned 18, is now a freshman at New York University and Budding political advisor to his father..
For the past two weeks, my TikTok For You page has been filled with posts from NYU students posting clips of Barron Trump attending class as if He was Sasquatch: The videos are blurry and hastily shot, and mostly show fellow students trying to track down the once-elusive Trump. These cryptic videos, with shaky camera angles and songs like Chamillionaire’s “Ridin,” are everywhere, taken from student “day in my life”-style videos and reposted on Barron’s dozens of fan accounts on TikTok and Instagram.
These posts have gotten millions of views and look like paparazzi photos. From the camera angle you can see that the people filming them are trying to hide them under backpacks or sweaters. New genres of Barron’s Memes have flourished.
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“I think Barron could have gone to any college, but the fact that he chose one of the most liberal colleges in the country speaks volumes,” Grace Rowley, an NYU student who posted about Barron on TikTok, told me. “I was surprised and really intrigued that he chose NYU. I would love to talk to him and read his essay on why he went to NYU.”
This type of projection has been part of Barron’s history for years.
Before September, Barron was an enigma. He had no social media accounts and rarely made public appearances. For eight years, his personal life and interests were left to the public imagination. In 2020, rumors swirled on TikTok that his then-classmates had identified his Roblox username, “JumpyTurtlee.” The account bio stated that the user was a fan of anime and K-pop and supported LGBTQ+ rights. While the rumor was never confirmed, it became part of Barron’s online mythos. Users would take videos of him looking sad and make it sound like he was miserable and despised his father, then post them under the hashtag #savebarron2020.
Barron was the subject of dozens of pieces of fan fiction on sites like Archive of Our Own and Wattpad, and on fan accounts that recycle the same clips and images over and over. As Slate writer Luke Winkie pointed out earlier this yearBarron became a blank canvas onto which anyone even remotely interested in the Trump family could project their own “fantasies.”