Why Barron Trump could be key to Donald winning back the White House

As the election enters its final stages, the Right is trying to woo America’s young men – making the ex-president’s youngest son invaluable

In an underground bar in Greenwich Village, former president Trump scans a QR code and pays for a round of burgers and Diet Cokes with $988 worth of Bitcoin. It would be an unlikely watering hole for most septuagenarians; stranger still to see the former president of the United States handing out foil-wrapped burgers in the half darkness of a Manhattan dive bar. But when the Trump campaign descended on Pubkey – a popular haunt for the Bitcoin fanatics at the nearby New York University (NYU) business school – one afternoon in September, it was with a particular group of voters in mind.
“Everybody that’s a crypto guy,” he addressed the room, “a crypto-maniac as I call them, because they really are – everybody, get out and vote because if you vote we cannot lose, we cannot lose.”
Trump told the crowd he knew they had been treated “very badly” by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the regulator, which has been on something of a crypto crackdown). “We want to get everybody that agrees with you people, what you’re doing – and there’s a big lot of people,” he told the packed bar. “We’re gonna treat you very fairly. But you have to get out and vote.” 
It was a 15-minute visit on the way to Long Island for a rally in which he would vow to win New York, a Democrat stronghold, for his followers. A niche campaign stop designed to reach a niche group of possible voters – namely young, chronically online men with an interest in the digital economy, many of whom may not bother heading to the polls on November 5. Mr Trump pledged his allegiance to Bitcoin, hailing it “the beginning of a new era”. One member of the crowd asked him if he’d come on their podcast. “Let us know, let our people know,” he replied. As the secret service ushered him out, a question came about the former president’s youngest son, Barron. “He’s going to college right near here and he’s into Bitcoin. What does something like this mean to him?” 
“Well it’s really happening – Bitcoin is really happening,” the former president replied. “Crypto generally. And Barron fully understands it, he really does. Young people understand it better than most.” A cry went up from the back of the bar: “He should come here when he’s 21!” 
In the nine years since his father first announced his candidacy for president, Barron Trump has been little more than the shortest (and then the tallest, by quite some way) in the line-up of Trump progeny. While his older half-brothers and -sisters were positioned front and centre, driving campaigns (and their own interests) forward, Barron was just a child – fiercely protected by his mother, Melania, and out of reach from public scrutiny. But after turning 18 in March, the youngest Trump seems to have taken his first tentative steps into politics. Behind the scenes, his influence on the man who could soon occupy the White House again is becoming clearer. 
If this is to be the masculinity election, then the Trump campaign’s secret weapon appears to be the former president’s youngest son. As the campaigns enter the final stretch and both candidates attempt to win over as many of the undecided or disengaged voters who could sway the result, the Right is going after young men. “This group is definitely winnable,” says Dan Cassino, an American political scientist who studies male gender identity. “They look like voters who don’t turn out to vote, they’re disaffected. But we’re seeing that the Trump campaign is doing fairly well among these voters.” 
Ideologically, these young men are hard to pin down. “They’re not liberal, they’re not progressive, they’re not MAGA, they’re not conservative. They’re disengaged. Trump is trying to win them over. They are a potentially winnable audience in an election that is exceptionally close.” 
The first sign Barron was about to enter the fray came in May, when it was announced he had been chosen to serve as a Florida delegate to the Republican National Convention. He hadn’t yet graduated from high school (the former president attended his graduation ceremony in the midst of his hush money trial later that month), but the youngest Trump was announced among a line-up of elected officials as part of the delegation to nominate his father. Trump said he was “all for it”. A political debut appeared to be in the offing. 
Two days later, his mother declined the invitation on his behalf. “While Barron is honoured to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments,” said the statement from Melania Trump’s office. 
A stumbling block in the launch of the latest member of the family firm on the world stage, perhaps, but away from the cameras, Barron was already beginning to play a crucial role in the battle to reelect his father. 
In April, podcaster and entrepreneur Patrick Bet David revealed he was among a small group of influencers who had been invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago at Barron’s request. “I get an email saying Barron Trump wants to have dinner with you because he follows the content,” Bet David told listeners of the PBD Podcast, describing a dinner party where the former president acted as “DJ” while Barron – “witty, smart, hilarious” – hosted the table. “We just watched Barron run dinner with stories, entertainment, everything.” 
The 18-year-old was “smart on politics” and sanguine about his own press. Bet David quoted Barron as saying he’d heard it was now “officially fair game to come after me” in the press. “I don’t care, good, do it. I get it, they’ve gone and done it to every kid. What’s the difference?” 
At the end of the night, Barron reportedly extended an open invitation for them to come back whenever they liked. “He was like, ‘whenever you guys want to come to dinner, you hit me up’,” comedian Vincent Oshana recalled. 
If the purpose of the dinner was for the attendees to talk positively (and publicly) about their evening with the Trumps, then it was a resounding success. Barron’s best friend appears to have been something of a broker – another Mar-a-Lago invitee, masculinity influencer Justin Waller (who has links to Andrew Tate), recounted how he received a message on Instagram from Bo Loudon, the 17-year-old son of Republican commentator Gina Loudon and a burgeoning Right-wing influencer in his own right (The Daily Beast calls him “MAGA’s Gen Z ambassador”). “I got a message from a young man that was with Trump in a photo and he’s like: ‘Hey, Barron likes your content and he’d like to invite you to Mar-a-Lago’,” Waller said. 
His verdict on the young Trump? “99.9 per cent of grown men do not understand the world the way Barron Trump understands the world. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll run the country one day.” 
The following month, Trump suggested his youngest son was beginning to have a political voice. “He does like politics, it’s sort of funny,” he told a Talk Radio station. “He’ll tell me sometimes, ‘Dad, this is what you have to do’.”
Then, over the summer, Trump sat down with a roster of influencers and streamers with young male followers. He met live streamer Adin Ross, YouTuber and wrestler Logan Paul, and comedian and podcaster Theo Von, dubbed “the next Joe Rogan”. Why? Because Barron is a fan of them all. 
“He knows so much about it,” Trump told Mail Online. “Adin Ross – you know, I mean I do – some people that I wasn’t so familiar with. Different generation. He knows every one of them. And we’ve had tremendous success, as you know.” 
He suggested Barron had introduced him to a new way of engaging with the media. “We did three unusual – I don’t know what you’d call them, but it’s a platform – with three people that I don’t know, but three people that Barron knows very well,” Trump said. 
“[He] actually calls all of them like friends of his because it’s a different generation. They don’t grow up watching television the same way as we did. They grow up looking at the internet or watching a computer, right?” 
Ross rose to fame streaming himself playing games online and counts figures like white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes among the guests on his channel. He sat with Trump – who began the interview by telling him “Barron says hello” – for an hour on Kick, the streaming platform, in front of an online audience which at one point was over 500,000 strong. “My son’s told me about you,” Trump told him. “He said ‘Dad, he’s really big.’ I said yeah but what else? He said ‘he’s also a friend of mine’.” 
After the interview, Trump publicly thanked his son for the “introduction to your friend”, posting on Truth Social: “Wow!!! Adin Ross Interview yesterday exploded, but in a very positive way! Platform set an all time record, by far, with over 100 million Views/Hits.” 
Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump strategist, says Barron “understands that traditional media platforms are dead or on life-support”. “His brilliant recommendations for his father to appear on some of the most important Gen Z podcasts brings the president’s patriotic message to a whole new audience.”
The podcast appearances, the Bitcoin bar, and now a new crypto venture. Trump and sons Donald Jr and Eric launched World Liberty Financial last month, a crypto project he said would “leave slow and outdated big banks behind”. In an interview on X, Trump said his children, including Barron (who is listed as the project’s “DeFi [decentralised finance] visionary”) had shown “great judgement” on crypto technology. It all adds up to a “play”, says Cassino, though it’s unclear whether Trump himself truly understands it. “The most recent interview he did about crypto where he talked about the launch – it seemed like he had no idea what he was talking about. He said, well Barron knows about this stuff.” 
Mayra Joli, a lawyer who has spent time with the Trumps in Mar-a-Lago, suggests the former president’s youngest son is keeping him “in the loop” with younger voters. “He knows what is happening with the youth because his son is exposing him to it.” 
It’s a “costless” move to court this group, says Cassino. “There isn’t an anti-crypto voter.” Are there crypto devotees who could be persuaded to actually turn up and vote, though? Possibly.
For Thomas Pacchia, owner of the Bitcoin bar Trump visited last month, it’s a smart move whether the former president has a full grasp on it or not. “The last four years under the Biden administration has been really punitive towards the Bitcoin industry,” he says, talking in the back room of the bar, just a stone’s throw from where Barron has just started as a student at the Stern Business School. “They’ve attacked a lot of the banks that supported Bitcoin companies, bitcoin miners.”
At the launch of his new crypto venture, Trump said Barron “knows this stuff inside out”. “He’s got four wallets or something.” It’s not surprising to Pacchia. “Barron is 19, I’m sure he’s online a fair amount. I think 19-year-old guys are generally into crypto.” 
For young men, the worlds of crypto and Bitcoin offer an online community, he explains. “These communities are really engaging and can suck you in. They’re super active and passionate.” 
It’s “not just [Barron]”, says Pacchia. “It’s probably amplified by who he is and what his life has been. A lot of the Covid generation were unfortunately stuck online so these communities have been their social gathering place.” 
The notion of a “crypto vote” has been widely dismissed during an election which is being fought on pivotal, ideological issues like abortion and immigration, but Pacchia says it’s a group that could “tip the scales” for the former president. “Especially if he’s able to get gen Z and millennial men out to vote who typically don’t. That could be a real catalyst and I think he knows that.” 
Young men have been “forgotten”, he says. “I think Covid was really damaging for that age group. So I think anybody speaking to them in their way with their interests at heart is going to do pretty well.”
If Barron was becoming a key player, then until July he was largely in the shadows. That was before the standing ovation at his father’s Florida rally, when he made a trademark Trumpian fist pump which delighted the crowd and had commentators hailing it his political debut. “‘That’s the first time he’s done it,” Trump told the crowd as Barron stood to receive his applause. “That’s the first time, right? You’re pretty popular. He might be more popular than Don and Eric. We gotta talk about this. Hey Don, we gotta talk about this.” 
The Daily Beast called him “the true heir” in a piece titled “The Barron Fist Pump That Reveals Donald Trump’s Plan for a MAGA Dynasty.” Meanwhile, a growing and bizarre trend had taken off on social media comparing Barron to Augustus Caesar, with memes seeking to prove his undeniably greco-roman profile and praising his “aristocratic physiognomy” – further fuel for the Trump fans obsessed by the idea of dynasty. 
It could have been the first of many appearances for Trump’s Gen Z whisperer and heir apparent. In fact, Barron has been away from the spotlight ever since. He started at NYU in September, and, if TikTok is anything to go by, has spent the first few weeks of college being surreptitiously filmed by fellow students amazed by sightings of this 6 foot 7 “sasquatch” figure and his security detail on campus. 
In an interview to publicise her memoirs last week, Melania said she “could not say” she was an “empty nester”, as her son is still living at home in Trump Tower. The former first lady is said to be hugely protective of her son. Footage which re-emerged this summer of a 2010 Larry King feature on the Trumps shows a four-year-old Barron with a Slovenian accent. “He has an accent,” King says to the couple. Melania laughs. “He does. He spends most of his time with me, so…” 
Speaking recently about her son’s decision to stay at home for college, Mrs Trump said: “It was his decision to come here, that he wants to be in New York and study in New York and live in his home and I respect that.” 
At 11am on a Monday morning in September, a steady stream of students flows into the Stern Business School, ready to be moulded into the American entrepreneurs of the future. One girl is heading from Starbucks to class in her pyjamas, carrying a lemonade and a panini. You’d imagine few of Barron’s fellow undergraduates arrive at lectures in a smartly pressed shirt, flanked by a security detail. 
“Given that the President followed in his father’s footsteps, I would be surprised if he didn’t like the idea of Barron becoming an incredibly successful businessman,” says Gorka, who feels Trump “may think twice about encouraging a life in politics”. 
Barron’s recent influence might, to some, suggest the opposite is true. If indeed he is becoming something of a political operative, how are his efforts landing? 
On the night of the recent vice presidential debate, New York’s Young Republicans Club gathers at a secret location – an Irish bar in midtown – for a viewing party. The Guinness is flowing, the sea of MAGA caps makes for an unusual scene in the middle of New York City. For one member of the club, Sean McCrossen, 19, the campaign’s recent moves have played perfectly. “I think it’s awesome. As a young person myself who watches Adin, who watches these streamers on Kick, on YouTube, I really enjoy all the content.” 
Another member, who asked not to be named, said it felt as if Trump was doing “a better job this time around of really going after a youth vote, a minority vote”. 
McCrossen, sporting a Trump T-shirt and a MAGA cap, credits Barron with the recent streamer interviews. “Trump has sat down with Adin Ross, he’s sat down with many other streamers that he wouldn’t be sitting down with if it wasn’t for Barron. President Trump recently did a big thing on crypto. He had a big X space where he spoke about crypto and all the things that have to do with it. This was largely due to Barron.” 
It’s a good move, he says, if the campaign hopes to reach out to “moderates and people in the middle” who are “attached to the cryptosphere”. 
Would he like to see Trump’s youngest son on the ticket one day? “I think Barron Trump would be awesome as president.”