US election
Trump is turning Republicans into a family business: now son Barron, 18, can take part
The youngest member of the family clan: 18-year-old Barron Trump (left) is now allowed to get involved – and far towers over his father Donald Trump, who is also tall
© Imago Images
Donald Jr., Eric, Tiffany, and formerly Ivanka: Donald Trump’s children are busy campaigning for their father. Now Barron, the youngest, is also ready: as a delegate at the party conference. The Republicans are becoming Trump’s family party.
He’s grown up, Donald’s youngest son. Even in the Trump family, which is not short on height, the 18-year-old now clearly stands out. Barron measures somewhere between 2.03 and 2.07 meters. He had caught up with his father, who is around 1.90 meters tall, years ago, and some Americans are already wondering whether the boy will stop growing at all. For a few weeks now, he has been old enough to get involved in politics – and is allowed to go to the party conference to elect his father as presidential candidate.
The Trumps are making dad the candidate
Along with his siblings Donald Jr., Eric, Tiffany and Aunt Lara, Barron will attend the Republican National Convention as a delegate. At the mid-July event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2,400 conservatives will choose their candidate for the race for the White House. The primaries are still ongoing, but Donald Trump has already received enough votes for his nomination. The rest is a formality.
It is not new that Donald Trump is using the family for his political ambitions, but he is doing so more and more blatantly. He systematically distributes the members to more influential positions: As soon as he was elected head of state in 2016, he made his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared advisors. The son-in-law, actually a real estate man like Trump, should immediately turn the big wheels: for example, pacify the Middle East. Ivanka, on the other hand, toured the world with her father and was the friendly face of his grim politics.
Donald Trump’s daughters-in-law are also getting involved
The couple has now retreated back to New York society life, but the rest of the family continues to fight at the patriarch’s side. Son Donald Jr., for example, supported his father so committedly from the start that he was quickly considered more “trumpier” than Trump. At times, the eldest offspring commented so often and so harshly on everything and everyone that he was even accused of having a serious political career – something that has so far come to nothing. His second wife, the former Fox News presenter Kimberly Guilfoyle, is in a leadership position and is responsible for the re-election of his father-in-law.
With Eric and Lara Trump, too, it is they who do the main political work. Like his older brother Don Jr., Eric will travel to Wisconsin as a Republican delegate to the party convention, which his wife helped organize. Lara Trump was elected co-head of the Republican National Committee (RNC), the umbrella organization of the Republicans, in March. Among other things, the RNC collects donations and organizes the nomination party conventions. The name Trump, in the form of the ex-president, not only influences conservative politics from the outside, but also occupies an executive chair.
The Trumps from the second row
Trump’s daughter Tiffany and Michael Boulos are taking things a little easier. She has publicly supported her father at the last two party conferences and will do so again this time. Otherwise, she prefers to stay in the second row. Her husband, on the other hand, is also traveling to Milwaukee with the rest of the family as a delegate.
The more Donald’s family circles around him politically, the more noticeable is the absence of his closest confidants: his wife Melania flirts with her lack of interest in her husband’s political fate. Even at events at her own property in Florida, she is regularly conspicuous by her absence. Perhaps the lettering that she once wore very publicly on a coat years ago was not just a fashion gag, but a very fundamental statement on her part: “I’m just not interested. Are you?”