As Barron Trump prepares for his high school graduation in Florida next month — which his dad, Donald Trump, might have to skip due to his criminal trial in New York — the youngest son of the former president has to decide where he’s going to college.
With the deadline for committing to a school weeks away, a report by the Daily Beast said that New York University is at the top of Barron’s list.
If so, that means that the youngest son of the former president would be returning to his hometown of New York City. At NYU, he also would be studying at a school that is about three miles from Trump Tower. That’s where he was raised for the first 11 years of his life, before he and his mother, Melania, moved to Washington, D.C., to live with his father in the White House.
The Daily Beast said that representatives for Trump did not respond to repeated inquiries about Barron’s university choice. NYU also did not respond to requests for comment, the Daily Beast said.
But Barron’s possible choice to attend NYU raises questions. Certainly, it is a prestigious university with a roster of famous alums, including such entertainment luminaries as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin and Anne Hathaway. Jack Dorsey also studied at NYU, where he has said he began writing the software that eventually became Twitter, which incidentally used to be Trump’s favorite way of communicating with his MAGA followers.
One hitch, though, with NYU is that it isn’t an Ivy League school. And Barron’s father has often expressed admiration for people with Ivy League educations, including himself. Because Trump and three of his older children, Don Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, the Daily Beast suggested that there could still be a last-minute change and Barron could end up at their alma mater.
The Trump family also has a connection to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where Eric Trump earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and management and Tiffany Trump earned her law degree. If Trump again wins the presidency, Barron could conceivably live at home with his parents at the White House.
Of course, like a lot of high school graduates, Barron might be itching to live on his own for the first time. The Trumps shouldn’t have to worry too much about saving on the cost of college housing, even though, as the Daily Beast said, Trump still owes a staggering amount of money following recent civil judgements against him. The sum is more than $500 million after Trump lost a defamation and sexual assault trial against E. Jean Carroll, and a civil fraud case filed by the New York Attorney General.
The Daily Beast said that if Barron does enroll at NYU, and Trump is elected president, Melania could face a dilemma. She and her son are known to be close, and maybe Melania would want to return to New York to be close to him after the family lived at her husband’s Mar-a-Lago private club the past four years.
For her husband’s second term in office, Melania also might not feel the urgency to be with her husband in Washington, D.C. It’s been widely observed that she hasn’t been much of a presence on the campaign trail. “American Women,” a new new book on first ladies, also suggested that Melania Trump wasn’t the most industrious or engaged woman to hold that title, as she “avoided being overscheduled, and at times avoided being scheduled at all.”
