Politics – News Analysis
Trump Gets Desperate and Turns to His Teenage Son Barron for Advice on How to Reach Young Voters
Good strategy, Don. Ask the kid with zero experience.
By Andrew Simpson
August 14, 2024

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It seems like Donald Trump will look anywhere except to the experts he (maybe) pays to run his campaign for advice on how to do it.

The latest advisor Trump has recruited is his just-turned-18 son, Barron Trump. I don’t know about you, but when I look for input on how to be effective at something, I generally tend to look for it from someone who has a little experience.

Although Trump himself already voted early in Florida today, his son was not with him. That means Barron has yet to cast a single vote for anything, ever, having only recently attained voting age. That’s a little like asking the tuba player how the guitar solo should sound in band. They can tell you what the other kids in band are like, but they can’t advise you on how to play the guitar.

Nevertheless, that’s what Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff, is telling NewsNation this week.

Mulvaney told a panel that Trump has “always empowered the youngest, ‘the weakest,’ the bottom—he’s always listened to everybody on the totem pole, he’s going to listen to Barron,” apparently unaware that he just called Barron “weak” and “the bottom of the totem pole.”

Yikes.

Although they’re trying to frame this as a good thing, the only advice Barron’s given his father so far in this race was to go on the podcast of Adin Ross, a controversial streamer who’s hosted white nationalists and a herd of also-ran celebrities.

I wonder how long after his interview with Ross Trump found out that the streamer refers to himself as “butt sniffer,” for his propensity for smelling the chairs of guests when they vacate them.

Some advice, Barron.

For the longest time, we in the business of writing news shied away from reporting on Barron, since he was underage. That seems like a reasonable rule — leave them alone until they can defend themselves.

But Barron has now inserted himself into the process. And he’s already proven that he’s just as “good” at politics as his brothers Eric and Don Junior.

At least Barron has the excuse of having been sheltered for a very long time by his protective mother, Melania. He actually rarely lived at home with his father, and stayed mostly away from any political events or really anything related to his father’s presidency.

His advice reflects it, though.