United States: Barron Trump, the rich kid who never had a nanny
Like the other children of presidents, the descendant of Donald Trump has been the target of numerous attacks from his father's enemies. "He's a very strong boy," says Melania, however, who dedicates her time to his education and has been able to count on the help of his own parents to help him. By SILVIA CRUZ LAPEÑA.
"One of the worst things in the world is to be the son of a president," wrote Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd head of state, and father of six. This was not, however, a gratuitous whining. The years and a book on the subject have proved him right. Figures and supporting stories confirmed that these children had enormous privileges, but also faced trials that they were not always able to face.
The book in question is signed Doug Wead, political adviser, and is the result of an investigation ordered by its leader: George Bush Sr., worried about the abuses of his offspring. It was 1988, and the conclusion of that commission was a 44-page document, which showed that some children were, over time, more likely than others to suffer from certain problems - divorce, alcoholism and premature death.
The derivative work of this investigation was published in 2003, which is why it does not include the case of Barron Trump, who is still too young (he is 14 years old) to know if he will suffer or at on the contrary, if he will profit from having been the “first child” of the United States. What we know of his childhood does not seem like a nightmare at first glance, although everything we do know has been told to us by people other than him, including his parents. So we do not know his version of what life is like when you are the son of President Donald Trump.
One thing is clear: if his father is re-elected on November 3, Barron will reach a majority in the White House, where he will have lived from his 10 to his 18 years, a key stage in the development of each individual, and he we will have to see how this experience will impact his future. For the moment, the only thing that we know is a detail of his past, marked by the egotism of his father even in the birth certificate: John Barron is the pseudonym that Trump used in the 90s to tell the media about his sexual exploits. With this nickname, passing himself off as a so-called press secretary for his companies, he called journalists to inform them of his romances with celebrities, and even revealed the name of his conquests: Madonna is one of between them. This masquerade did not deceive anyone: everyone knew who was behind this pseudonym, but that did not prevent the tycoon from naming his fifth child, born on March 20, 2006, the result of his union with Melania, his third wife.
A family matter
Very young, the child is already showing that he has character. It is the family butler, Anthony Senecald who remembers it. So, when he was five, the boy said, "Anthony, you're fired." He said so as the housekeeper walked in one morning to serve him breakfast. The injunction mimicked the one his father used on The Apprentice, a reality show that showed entrepreneurs kicked out of the contest with the phrase Barron used that day in place of a hello to his butler, while he was still just a toddler.
Senecald also gave details to the New York Times about how the Trump children were raised. For example, in the villa of Mar-a-Lago, where they ran like wild beasts, to the library which contained priceless old books, "that no one in the family had read", and that Trump finished by transforming into a bar. His mother, however, did everything possible to ensure that the young boy was educated. For this, she insists that he speaks French and Slovene, his native language, which his grandparents Viktor Knavs and Amalija are responsible for passing on to him.
Melania’s parents are a constant presence in Barron’s life, as her father and mother tell People magazine, to whom they gave their first interview as new occupants of the White House. The reason they don't have a nanny is because they won't let someone else take care of their boy. That’s why Melania’s parents, who have had American citizenship since 2018, follow them as much as possible as they travel aboard Air Force One.
Between father and mother
Grandparents spend a lot of time in Mar-a-Lago, where the Trumps come to rest. They are also traveling with their grandson to New York City, where he has his own apartment in the Trump Tower. And in Washington, where he studied at Saint Andrew's Episcopal School, an educational center where many modern-day business people were trained, such as Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay. Barron is therefore the first president's child in more than three decades not to study at the Sadweelks School, where Malia and Sasha Obama were educated. In order to explain why the young boy was sent to this school, which costs around $ 40,000 a year, Melania displayed the diversity card. Indeed, according to the school’s website, 40% of students are from a minority and “respect all religious denominations”. While she was making this statement, her husband was saying something quite different: "I think Islam hates us." This was no slippage: as the Medium website demonstrated, the President of the United States and father of Barron made overtly Islamophobic comments 86 times.
Her parents think, or at least say they think they have different opinions on important matters. But they also have a very different role in Barron's education. So her maternal grandparents are very present in her life, but her father is not so much. What Melania's ex-friend and advisor Stephanie Winston Wolcott tells in her book 'Melania and Me' is that the First Lady's priority has always been her son, while Donald is too busy a father. One of the few phrases related to his fathering role, found in the media, is: “I have always forbidden my children to use drugs, drink alcohol or smoke. You start and then you can't stop. "
It's up to Melania to take responsibility for the child, to whom her husband pays little attention: "He's busy, and I'm taking care of Barron. What is important in a couple is to know who takes care of what ”, she tells in the magazine Parenting, where she explains that it is she who is responsible for ensuring that the father and the son spend time together, have dinner for two or play golf. “He deeply admires his father. He wants to become like him, "said the first lady, who referred to him as" little Donald, "a nickname linked to their resemblance which is not just physical.
Few friends, a lot of attacks
If Barron has friends, public opinion does not know them. Nothing is known of her links with other teenagers from the "Lucky Sperm Club", heirs and heirs to powerful families like the Bloombergs, the Vanderbilts and the Johnson, a group to which Robert Wood Johnson V. belongs. This child, also late, is that of a friend of her father, Woody Johnson, United States Ambassador to England and of the ex-actress Suzanne Ircha, daughter of Ukrainian immigrants and friend of Melania since the Slovenian arrived in the United States in the 90s.
Although the teenager’s privacy is amply protected, there is a feeling of loneliness in the few questions asked about him to his parents. “He really enjoys playing alone,” his mother replies when asked how he spends his free time. Her older sister, Ivanka, also said her brother spends most of his time in the White House with his nephews and cousins.
Tension and harassment
In his book on Children of Presidents, Doug Wead explains that on a personal level, a president's greatest pain is when their children are used to attack him. It has happened to Trump, like his predecessors, more than once. This does not count in this case the criticisms directed at Ivanka Trump or her husband, Jared Kushner, who are not only members of the family, but indeed employees of the White House.
But Barron is still too young to enjoy that ease - dedicate himself to politics - that being a president’s child offers. This is why the criticisms and attacks of which he is the victim are more like what we suffered Malia and Sasha Obama, who had to endure the lessons given by a Republican adviser, who ridiculed them by demanding "from them" a little more class ”sartorial, or the comments of a TV host who spoke about the sexual preferences of young girls, still minors. For Barron, the mockery began when his father entered the White House. The little boy's actions have been the butt of memes, jokes and comments of all kinds, without anyone seeming to remember that it was in fact a 10-year-old.
Some differences
Last year, Donald Trump was subjected to impeachment proceedings, to which his son's name was attached. "Trump can call his son Barron, that won't make him a baron," said Pamela Karlan, professor at Stanford University. Melania pulled out the fangs: "You should be ashamed of your complacency and bias and using a child to do it," she wrote on social media, a comment her husband shared, after which the White House sent out a press release asking that we respect "the long tradition of leaving children out of the debate." "
But this tradition does not exist. While it is not normal to attack the children of presidents, it has happened many times. Harassment suffered by Malia and Sasha Obama, Jenna and Barbara Bush and of course Chelsea Clinton, who, aged 12, must have listened to presenter Rush Limbaugh physically compare her to a dog. In fact, Hillary Clinton’s daughter is the one who fights the most against these attacks: “Leave him alone. Let Barron be a child, he has a right to that. Actress Rosie O’Donnell also broke this rule when she claimed Barron had autism. This statement provoked an extremely violent reaction from Donald Trump: "He's a good boy, leave him alone," said the president, who nevertheless blithely insults minors like Greta Thunberg.
The way Barron is treated is not much different from that of other presidents' children and this is precisely one of the keys that Wead analyzes in his book: the media pressure they must endure, especially when are still children. However, there are still two things that differentiate the case of the younger Trump from previous cases. One is that apart from the moment of impeachment, Barron was the target of comedians. But not journalists, or important figures in the United States, or rivals of his father. The other difference is that these comments had consequences that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
One example is that of Saturday Night Live writer Katie Rich. In 2017, she tweeted: "Barron will be the first homeschooled child to shoot at his school." The next day she was kicked out. In 1977, that same show aired a gag that ridiculed Amy Carter, the daughter of the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, on her way to her school, a public institution made up predominantly of African Americans. The star of the skit was nine years old at the time, and the show's producer, Lorne Michaels remembers that no one was fired, and no one complained.
Are minors being protected more today? Are all of us - spectators, politicians, journalists - more sensitive than 40 years ago? Or does the current public debate, built from half-truths and insults, to which Barron's father contributes so much, have a role in it?
