There may be someone new in Barron Trump’s life. On Friday, News Nation reported that an anonymous “friend on campus” at NYU, where Barron, 19, recently concluded his freshman year, said the first son “has a really nice girlfriend and hangs out with her a lot.”
The source didn’t share any additional details about Barron’s alleged new love interest, but did share a little more insight into the first son’s social life.
“[Barron is] much more like his mother, Melania,” added the source. “He keeps his head down and gets on with it. He is trying not to be BMOC (big man on campus).”
There’s no other information about Barron’s potential romance. However, in February, conservative influencer Mari Arana, a fellow NYU student, responded to the Daily Mail’s claim that she “may fit the mold of the perfect girlfriend for Barron” by saying she hadn’t yet met the first son, but, “It’s not like I was against it.”
Whoever she is, the reported girlfriend may mark Barron’s first relationship, at least according to his dad. In October 2024, the president said on Patrick David’s PBD Podcast that his son was “good-looking,” but added, “I don’t think he’s had a girlfriend yet.”
“He doesn’t mind being alone, but he’s somebody that gets along with people,” the president clarified.
The youngest Trump child has been plagued with rumors he’s struggling to fit in since he started his freshman year at the university last September.
In December, TMZ reported that Barron “hardly exists” on campus because the constant presence of Secret Service makes it difficult for him to socialize. Instead, the outlet said he had “been asking NYU students for their Discord usernames and gamertags to play together online.”
Less than a week after the TMZ report, an anonymous source insisted to People that Barron was not struggling to fit in, and was actually “very popular with the ladies.”
“He’s tall and handsome,” claimed People’s source. “A lot of people seem to think he’s pretty attractive—yes, even liberal people like him.”
However, in February, a Vanity Fair investigation into Barron’s life at NYU quoted Kaya Walker, then the president of NYU College Republicans, as saying the Trump scion was “sort of like an oddity on campus.”
“He goes to class, he goes home,” noted Walker, who quickly resigned after the quote was published.
Now, the News Nation source claims Barron “does have friends, he just… screws the limelight,” unlike the rest of his family.
The insight into Barron’s life on campus comes as his parents attempt to control the narrative about his choice of college. On Tuesday, the First Lady denied rumors that Barron had been rejected from Harvard after social media users theorized that could be the reason for the president’s perpetually escalating feud with the Ivy League school.
In a statement to the New York Post, Melania Trump’s communications director, Nicholas Clemens, said, “Barron did not apply to Harvard, and any assertion that he, or that anyone on his behalf, applied is completely false.”
The source also had a second revelation about the first son: he’s actually “pretty apolitical” on campus, and “not interested in” taking control of the Republican Party from his father.
The assertion seems to contradict the narrative surrounding Barron during the 2024 election, when his parents implied he was instrumental in helping the current president connect with Gen Z through podcast appearances.
In May 2024, President Trump even said he sometimes receives political advice from Barron, who joined him for much of the presidential campaign.
“[Barron] does like politics,” Trump said at the time. “It’s sort of funny, he’ll tell me sometimes, ‘Dad, this is what you have to do.’”
Just before the election, in October 2024, Trump’s senior advisor Jason Miller told Politico that Barron had been providing key advice on the president’s podcast strategy.
“Barron has been very involved in selecting or recommending… a number of the podcasts that we should do,” Miller told the outlet’s Playbook Deep Dive podcast. “Hats off to the young man. Every single recommendation he’s had has turned out to be absolute ratings gold.”
More recently, however, the president has implied Barron’s interests now lie elsewhere. In March, when Laura Ingraham asked Trump whether Barron’s “aptitude is in business or politics,” the president said his son instead has an “unbelievable aptitude in technology.”
On campus, Barron has been notably absent from conservative student groups like the College Republicans. However, after Walker resigned as president, the organization reportedly invited Barron to join its ranks, calling him “the future of the conservative movement.”
