Barron Trump Is TikTok’s Latest Celebrity: ‘I Like My Suitcase’ Clip Goes Viral, Inspires Club Remix
TikTok users have spread and remixed a years-old clip of Barron Trump, the 18-year-old son of President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania, speaking in a Slovenian accent as a young child, making him an unexpected phenomenon on the platform despite having no social media presence himself.
An old clip of Barron Trump as a child went viral on TikTok. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ... [+]
In the clip, which aired on CNN and appears to show Barron Trump with his parents in his father’s office, a young Barron holding a briefcase says, “I like my suitcase” and asks his mother, “I have to go to school now?”
The clip, which went viral after the Daily Mail uploaded it to TikTok last week and garnered more than 54 million views, also contains a brief clip of Melania and Donald Trump speaking with Larry King, telling him Barron has Melania’s accent because he spends most of his time with her.
The audio of Barron has since been used in more than 65,000 TikTok videos, with many users amused by his accent matching his mother’s instead of his father’s and that he appears to carry a briefcase with him instead of a backpack.
One TikTok user claimed “everyone at NYU is repeating this through the halls” on a video viewed more than 6 million times, referencing Barron Trump’s recent high-profile enrollment at New York University.
A club remix of Barron Trump saying, “I like my suitcase,” also went viral, with more than 20,000 users using the audio in their videos, some of whom have garnered millions of views partaking in a trend where they zip themselves in a suitcase.
Edited TikTok videos of Donald Trump doing the viral “Trump dance”—made famous at his rallies and increasingly embraced on social media and by professional athletes—to the “I like my suitcase” remix have also gone viral.
Trump, who was 10 years old when his father was first elected to the presidency, has largely stayed away from the limelight and clips of him speaking are rare. He is the only son of Melania Trump, and is a younger step-sibling to his father’s four other children. During his father’s first presidency, he finished school in New York before moving to the White House in the summer of 2017. He seldom made campaign appearances but reportedly played a larger role in his father’s 2024 campaign by urging his father to appear on popular podcasts associated with “bro culture” and the “manosphere” to reach young male voters, a demographic considered key to Trump’s victory. When a Trump adviser pitched making campaign appearances on popular podcasts, Trump said, “Ask Barron,” the Washington Post reported. Barron Trump reportedly told his father to speak with Theo Von and Adin Ross, popular media personalities who have about 7 million Instagram followers each. Von’s interview with Trump has about 15 million YouTube views, while a YouTube upload of Ross’ Kick stream with Trump has 2.7 million views. Ross endorsed Trump and his last three Instagram posts are with the president-elect, in one of which he wears a “Make America Great Again” hat.
Barron Trump’s sudden social media fame also coincides with his enrollment at New York University’s Stern School of Business this fall. Some students have posted pictures and videos of Trump at school, often blurry, to TikTok. Melania Trump told Fox News it was Barron’s decision to attend school in New York, and she stated he is “enjoying” his college experience. She told Fox News she isn’t an “empty nester,” suggesting her son may be living at home instead of in the school’s dorms.
Barron Trump’s virality comes on the heels of his father also inspiring a viral trend, the “Trump dance,” which has been widely imitated online and by professional athletes on the field. Donald Trump popularized the dance—a simple motion of pumping both fists back and forth—at his rallies for both his 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns, often performed to “Y.M.C.A.” by Village People. The “Trump dance” has been used as a celebratory gesture by athletes including San Francisco 49ers player Nick Bosa, a vocal Trump supporter, U.S. men’s soccer team captain Christian Pulisic and even several international athletes. Though the dance may indicate a greater cultural embrace of Trump, some, including Pulisic, have defended the move as apolitical.
Trump turns to teen son Barron and his influencer best friend to try to rival Harris’s ‘brat’ Gen Z appeal (The Independent)
These Athletes—From The NFL, UFC And U.S. Soccer Embrace ‘Trump Dance’ (Forbes)