Barron Trump: America’s edgelord The White House is now officially based

Despite all this acclaim, the boy himself seems to be playing it cool among the stick-and-poke tattoo enthusiasts over at NYU. He is said to have told fellow students that he “doesn’t support any party” — but, as any former teenager will remember, all attempts at nonchalance will be blown to bits by a well-meaning parent at the first opportunity. “Voted for the first time — for his dad,” Melania captioned a picture of the 18-year-old hulking over his ballot, looking like a besuited werewolf. Any hope of being mysteriously chic will forever be thwarted by the fact that everyone knows Barron is ferried into college by minders from Trump Tower each morning, and by the fact that he is, based on a little social media stalking, haunted by his boyhood friendship with the lamest guy in the world.

Bo Loudon, unlike Barron, is prolific on social media, where his Instagram bio warns “God first”. He is the sort of diminutive, tight-trousered, swoop-fringed teenager whose Instagram consists of thumbs-up photographs with taller and more famous people — often, Donald himself. One wonders how MAGAmind Bo, who styles himself as “Trump’s young gun”, plays among Barron’s queer-studies-major conquests (these are always the fittest girls at any university), barely grazing his elbow as the prince of populism blags a conversation about jorts (“yeah, I really like Mitski too…”). Unlike almost every student before him, Barron does not have the luxury of spending the summer between school and uni aggressively reinventing himself. He can’t even bluff a romantic past — something even the best of us had to do during freshers week. Amid speculation that he had locked down the 20-year-old model Klara Jones, his dad told a podcast that, to his knowledge, Barron had never had a girlfriend. Ouch.

Barron is understood to have said that he is now “fair game” for media intrusion. After all, he’s an old hand. Unlike during his father’s first term, when he was a gawky little 10-year-old, Barron is now 18, massive, and to a certain type of acne-ridden, Prime-gulping young man, cool. And politicians’ kids are the hottest influencers of the moment: in a viral video from election night, Texas senator Ted Cruz addressed a crowd in Houston. “I believe, and I hope and pray, that Donald Trump will be elected president of the United States,” he said. His 16-year-old daughter Caroline, standing behind with the rest of the family in a shiny red minidress, gave the universal facial expression for “yikes”, turning to her applauding mother Heidi and saying: “Don’t clap for that!”

So Barron’s in good company, but it’s impossible to know what lies in wait for him. You can already buy “Barron Trump President 2044” merch on eBay, and there is speculation that his dad might pull him out of uni to help run the show in Washington — but the fates of America’s past first children might give a bigger clue about his future.

The original White House whipping girl was undoubtedly Chelsea Clinton. She wasn’t yet 13 when her father Bill was elected in 1993, at the dawn of MTV and TMZ-style mass media scrutiny, minus the reverence for politicians. Most famously, the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh told his TV audience: “Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?” He held up a picture of the 12-year-old. Another time, during one of Mike Myers’ beloved Wayne’s World sketches on SNL, basement-dwellers Wayne and Garth ranked the top-10 things they loved about Bill Clinton. At number three came vice-president Al Gore’s “babe-a-licious” daughters. “Schwing! Finally there’s some talent in the White House!” Kristin, Gore’s younger daughter, was 15. Number two on the list, “Chelsea”, is edited out of the official YouTube clip. On the live show, they declared that pre-teen Chelsea was “a babe in development”. Myers later apologised for the joke.

More recently, Chelsea has spoken out over the scrutiny of Barron Trump: “Like, he’s a kid. Don’t objectify this kid,” she said in 2020. Yet without a doubt, the first girls have it worse. During the highly hokey presidential “turkey pardoning” ceremony in 2014, Sasha and Malia Obama inevitably exchanged some embarrassed side-eye. I defy any teenager not to be mortified when watching their dad place a hand over a bemused bird called “Cheese”, solemnly declaring that he will spare it from Christmas dinner. As it happened, the Obama girls’ teenage ennui prompted the wrath of a Republican staffer called Elizabeth Lauten, who wrote a Facebook post fuming that they should “try showing a little class”; “dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at the bar. And certainly don’t make faces during televised public events”, she raged. The ticking-off sparked an international conversation about the comportment of first children — and one which, thankfully, came down on the girls’ side (Lauten, unsurprisingly, resigned shortly after).

There was nothing new about Turkeygate. Jimmy Carter’s youngest child, bespectacled nine-year-old Amy, was criticised for reading books during a state dinner in 1977. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, was stung by revelations that his son Ron had dropped out of Yale to become a ballet dancer, raising the hackles of conservative onlookers and probably prompting uncharitable jokes about “Nancy’s boy”. “I don’t think I’m at all flamboyant,” Ron was forced to say, while his mother remarked: “My son being in ballet is not a political statement, nor does it say anything about his masculinity.”

But the biggest terrors of White House teenagedom have to be the Bush twins, Barbara and Jenna. Nineteen at the time of their father’s inauguration, they were half-hounded, half-admired for their apparent drunken antics. Jenna’s boyfriend was ferried home by Secret Service agents after being arrested for public drunkenness; there were stories of weed-smoking, fake IDs and spring-break sprees in Mexico. In 2001, they were busted for trying to order drinks at a restaurant in Austin, weeks after Jenna was arrested for “holding a bottle of beer” in a nightclub. Needless to say, this tells us much more about the bizarre puritanism of American drinking laws than the twins’ deviance. “She turned up in court in a low-cut black shirt, pink Capri trousers and a toe ring,” The Guardian’s Katie Roiphe effused in her weird coverage, typical of the genre. That same reporter describes the Bush twins as “southern party girls exuding a kind of plump lazy sexuality, evoking warm nights and big cars, chewing gum and margaritas”. Elsewhere, she described the moment Jenna “almost fell out of her strapless dress” at a White House event. The frenzy around the Bush twins’ sexiness and hedonism is part of a national pastime — slobbering over the cult of the cheerleader, of the prom queen, the rogue, corruptible element of an all-American family.

This, above anything, explains the character of our fascination with White House children. It is a defilement fantasy; a delightful sense of risk, of protocol collapsing in the face of unruly teen wilfulness. For the girls, there is always an added sexualising element — the politeness and conservatism of the first family set-up is tantalising set-dressing for predatory gazes (“all grown up!”). Teenagers have a unique inability to hide emotions — they are aware but guileless, they betray the ridiculousness at the heart of political pageantry. They are seen as firebrands because they are not tamed by convention, and have not yet learned to grease. Their extreme sensitivity to irony was once a PR pitfall — now, it has become an asset.

Barron Trump pushing his father into the world of the internet edgelord is a sign of the times, in that traditional political processes have collapsed; never before would a presidential hopeful use their teenage offspring for anything other than wholesomeness votes — much less advice. Informality, saying the unsayable, is now part of the brand. Stuffed shirts are out; being “based” is in. The next leader of the free world has marketed himself as a fossilised teenager, egged on by his middle-school admirer (Musk) and steered by an actual teenager towards the edgiest kids in the bleachers.

What lies in store for Barron remains a mystery for now — but what I wouldn’t give to be at one of those NYU parties when murmurs rocket through the dorms: “You won’t believe who’s here!” Like royal courts of old, rooms must sway at a glimpse of the baron.

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Poppy Sowerby is an UnHerd columnist

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