Donald Trump's daughter-in-law Lara has debunked a wild conspiracy theory relating to the president’s youngest son Barron, comparable to the Moon landing being faked or that 9/11 was an inside job.
On the latest episode of The Right View with Lara Trump, the presenter said she had been immersed in viral videos about her brother-in-law and felt compelled to address one of the outlandish claims on his behalf.
The youngest of the president’s children, Barron has shown apparent reluctance to enter the national spotlight, in stark contrast to his father or elder brothers Don Jr and Eric. This has inadvertently caused the 20-year-old to acquire an air of mystery amongst some fans, with one of the more absurd claims being that he is a “time traveller”.
Lara Trump discussed the viral theory on her show Thursday, marvelling at the “amount of views that some of these videos get where they really dissect how this really worked out,” only to deliver a sharp dose of reality.
“I’m not trying to ruin anybody or rain on any parades here,” she said. “Barron Trump is not a time traveler. Sorry to say it. I’m sorry, I broke a lot of people’s hearts today.”
Saying the conspiracy was illustrative of “how much really crazy stuff exists” online, she challenged her viewers: “Name me one time traveler. Name me anybody who actually can say that that’s a real thing?
“It doesn’t exist but people have gotten so far off the rails on this ‘Barron being a time traveler’ thing. I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s crazy. I’ve known Barron for 18 years, OK, he’s not a time traveler.”
She continued: “I’ve seen him grow up, it’s crazy stuff, but I think people love to grab on to conspiracies or things that are very far-fetched like that.”
The basis for the improbable theory – which has been discussed by Joe Rogan, among others – is that the American lawyer and author Ingersoll Lockwood (1841-1918) wrote two children’s books in the late 19th century in which the title character is a wealthy boy adventurer named Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp, or Baron Trump.
The character features in two novels, The Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and his Wonderful Dog Bulger (1889) and Baron Trump’s Marvellous Underground Journey (1893), which are said to have been inspired by the taste for fantastical literature brought about by the popularity of Lewis Carroll’s work.
In the books, Baron Trump is a precocious boy with “a very active brain” who lives at Castle Trump, from which he sets out on globe-trotting adventures that regularly find him causing offence to the characters he encounters.
The parallels between Lockwood’s work and the MAGA era were first pointed out during President Trump’s first term but the idea that the novels are based on the real Barron Trump’s travels back to the 1890s has blossomed alongside growing interest in the man himself.
Another later Lockwood novel, 1900, or The Last President is arguably even more prescient in that it concerns a populist outsider candidate winning a U.S. presidential election and bringing about the downfall of the republic.
On another recent episode of her show, Lara Trump said of the real-life Barron: “I don’t know if he knows that the internet is obsessed with him. I think he knows that there is a lot of interest. But that’s why he likes to lay low. That’s why he likes to play it cool. That’s why you don’t see him all the time.”
