As first lady, Melania Trump spent a fair amount of time hitting out at media personalities and other public figures who made comments and cracked jokes about her young son Barron, at one point saying that a “minor child” should be off-limits from scrutiny and “hate.”
But Melania Trump probably won’t have such an easy time anymore convincing strangers that it’s not OK to say things about 16-year-old Barron, now that her husband, Donald Trump, has announced that he’s running again for president in 2024.
It also won’t help the former first lady’s efforts to protect Barron after the teenager was called upon this week to help shoulder the burden of showing family support for the patriarch’s candidacy. Barron, reportedly standing 6-foot-7, was a highly visible presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, when the twice-impeached former president announced his desire to retake the White House.
More notably, Barron and his older brother Eric were the only two of Trump’s five children to make it to the campaign event. Tiffany Trump wasn’t at the announcement, as she’s reportedly on her honeymoon after getting married at Mar-a-Lago the previous weekend.
Perhaps more painful for Trump: Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, his two oldest children and his most prominent family supporters during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, were conspicuously absent, the Daily Beast reported.
A source told the Daily Beast that Trump Jr., a leading online proponent of Trumpian politics, was busy on a “hunting trip in the Mountain West” and “couldn’t get a flight out to make it back for the speech because of bad weather.”
The timing for Trump Jr’s hunting trip, and his excuse for not showing up at his father’s announcement, sounds a bit strange. Trump Jr. was at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night for Tiffany’s wedding, and his father had been saying for days that he would make his big campaign announcement on Tuesday. It’s odd that Trump Jr., who plans to campaign for his father, couldn’t put off his hunting trip for a couple days so he could stand by his father.
Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump has made it clear that she wants to distance herself from politics altogether, which means she won’t campaign for her father this time around and she won’t return to work for him in the White House if he’s reelected. In a statement released to the media Tuesday, Ivanka Trump said, “This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family.”
Trump spent much of the past weekend — during Tiffany’s wedding festivities — begging Ivanka Trump to make an appearance Tuesday night, the New York Post reported.
In the end, Trump had to settle for Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, being at the announcement. He also had to be grateful for Eric and his wife, Lara, standing up for him, and Kimberly Guilfoyle putting in an appearance on behalf of Trump Jr., her absent boyfriend.
But with Barron’s more headline-grabbing siblings absent Tuesday night, the boy’s presence was all the more apparent, and not just because his height allows him to tower above everyone else he’s around, including members of his family, who are all tall people.
Barron looked more comfortable in the spotlight than he has in the past. As a boy or young teenager, he sometimes looked like he was shy or uncomfortable when cameras were trained on him. Sometimes, his expressions generated memes and jokes that were likely to make his protective mother unhappy.
But on Tuesday night, a more assured-looking Barron followed close behind his father and mother. One YouTube channel joked that it looked like Barron was acting like his father’s bodyguard, given that he also walked in close proximity to the former president’s security. From wherever Barron was standing, he seemed at ease, sometimes smiling to the crowd, saying hello and even imitating his father’s signature thumbs-up gesture.
Given Barron’s apparent self-assurance and that he’s just two years from being an adult, it’s hard to imagine Melania Trump being able to go on Twitter, as she did from 2016 to 2020, to convincingly argue that he’s a vulnerable “minor child” who should be protected from people’s scrutiny. It would also be hard for her to protect Barron if he becomes more of a participant in his father’s campaign he was in the past.
It’s easy to imagine that Trump would call on his son to make some appearances in order to help put on a united family front for the candidacy after Ivanka Trump bailed. As has been reported by The Washington Post and other outlets, Trump is launching his campaign when he’s politically “vulnerable” — after voters resoundingly rejected his endorsed candidates in last week’s midterm elections.
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