The Education—and Anointment—of Barron Trump

Walker was mildly bothered by the frenzy around Barron, arguing that he deserved a more normal college experience. She recalled a joking remark from one of her professors that “he doesn’t really belong here.”

As a general matter, she understands why Barron has been so readily elevated by his peers. But even with a crop of new right-wing culture warriors beginning to emerge, the foremost celebrity in Walker’s mind has remained Lana Del Rey. She’s not sure that anyone has yet arrived as a mainstream face of the rearrangement she has been feeling at school.

“Somebody in the hair-and-makeup trailer,” Timothée Chalamet remembered. “They would play this podcast, which is how I discovered it.”

In the midst of his press tour for A Complete Unknown, the actor was explaining to Theo Von, the comedian and podcaster, how he wound up on his increasingly visible show. Von, who has described himself as feeling like a “secretary sometimes for Joe Rogan,” is one of the leading personalities in the loose media space, characterized by its free-ranging and lengthy interview style, that became a focal point of Trump’s campaign last year.

In this ecosystem, Barron is often understood as a behind-the-scenes operator as well as an aspirational figure. His coming-of-age has coincided with the rise of a corner of pop culture into which the president has slotted naturally. “He knows you very well,” Trump said during his own appearance on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von. “He said, ‘Dad, he’s big.’”

After Von attended the January inauguration, where the president’s son received a standing ovation at a rally, he posted a parting wish on X: “I wanna meet dang Barron!!”

As Barron prepared for the day that his father would assume office once more, he worked with a tailor recommended to him by Justin Waller, a steel entrepreneur and internet personality. Waller is a friend of Andrew Tate’s—he told me that the ultra-notorious influencer encouraged him to join his online fray—and had his YouTube channels taken down for promoting one of Tate’s businesses. Just recently, Waller said, he, Barron, and Barron’s close friend Bo Loudon, a rising 18-year-old conservative voice, were in a canopy area at Mar-a-Lago, “talking about everything that’s going on here.”

“Through the glass,” Waller said, “I see Donald and Elon and [Donald Trump] Jr. walking in, so they’re 30 yards away from us while I’m sitting there talking to Barron.”

He became connected to Barron after Loudon reached out last year to tell him that his friend was a fan of his work. Waller, podcaster Patrick Bet-David, and UFC fighter Colby Covington dined with the teenage duo at Mar-a-Lago a few weeks later.

“We’re just trying to help the young men,” Waller said. “There’s a whole generation of young men that need help. A lot of single-mother households, they don’t have direction. They need somebody to tell ’em it’s okay to be strong, it’s okay to be masculine.”

Not including Barron, though. Waller described him as “the kind of guy that can start a business that can go public, but he also can sit down and drink a beer with the individual that’s running his manufacturing facility.”

Newsweek recently reported that Barron and a friend from his Palm Beach prep school, along with the cousin of a Republican congressman from Idaho, were planning to start a luxury real estate firm. One of Barron’s partners said that the company had been dissolved shortly after the election to avoid media coverage, but that it would be relaunched in the spring. In the following days, he doubled back and said it wasn’t happening at all. No further business ventures have been announced yet—Barron’s not due to graduate until 2028, when his father’s term will have nearly ended.

A couple of weeks after Trump returned to office, as the spring semester was beginning, Barron appeared at NYU in a cream sweater and black Adidas sneakers. Alongside a fresh set of paparazzi photos, the New York Post announced that “​​the big man on campus is back.”