Barron Trump alerted his dad to Charlie Kirk shooting in panicked call, book claims
He might be in the news from time to time, but Barron Trump has a tendency to stay out of the spotlight even as his dad continues to hit the headlines.
However, the 20-year-old son of Donald and Melania – currently studying at New York University’s Stern School of Business campus in Washington DC – is known to have a close relationship with his presidential parents.
So much so that a new book claims it was Barron who alerted Trump to the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last year, phoning him in what’s been described as a ‘state of panic’.
Regime Change: Inside The Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan recounts how Barron bypassed White House aides to call Trump directly — as he was fearful his dad’s life could also be in danger.
The book claims Trump attempted to reassure his son by saying: ‘Calm down honey, calm down’ while noting that the president, who survived a previous assassination attempt in 2024, was ‘plainly unnerved himself’.
As Vance and White House staff scrambled to collect intel on the shooting to update the president, the books claims: ‘Trump’s youngest son, Barron, had already called to tell his father that Kirk had been shot.
‘The nineteen-year-old Barron was a big fan of Kirk’s and he had phoned in a state of distress. He had been worried about an assassin taking another shot at his father.’
The books says that Trump had warned Kirk that he could be the target of political violence due to his open-air college campus events, according to People.
It claims Trump said: ‘Man, Charlie. He’s such a good guy. He really helped me out in 2024. He got the youth vote,’ and quickly looked away from video footage of the assassination when it later emerged.
Right-wing influencer Kirk, 33, was fatally shot in front of a crowd of 3,000 students at Utah Valley University last September.
Tyler James Robinson, 22, has since been charged with offences including aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, and obstruction of justice over the shooting.
He could face the death penalty if he is convicted of killing Kirk.
The book’s claim that it was Barron who told his dad what had happened is at odds with other accounts, which suggest that it was vice-president JD Vance who broke the news to the President in the Oval Office.
However, some have suggested that it was Barron who first alerted his dad to Kirk’s shooting while news of his death was later confirmed by Vance.
While reports of this exchange might offer some insight into the youngest Trump, 6 foot 9 inch Barron has also made an impact with his contribution to the Trump family fortune.
The student, who is reported to have taught his dad what a crypto ‘wallet’ is, was listed as a co-founder of cryptocurrency company World Liberty Foundation, along with his father and brothers, in 2024, just months before the US election which saw Donald Trump win a second term in the White House.
It was his win which gave the company a major boost — adding an estimated $1.5bn (£1.1bn) or more to the Trump family fortune, according to Forbes.
Meanwhile, new figures have revealed that the president has made more than $1billion in cryptocurrency, including $500million from his meme coin.
While Trump earned more than £30,000,000 from his two golf resorts in Scotland, that’s pocket money compared to the $1,400,000,000 he made in cryptocurrency, including through his own currency, $TRUMP, which he has widely promoted while in office.
The President launched his now-famous cryptocurrency shortly before he re-entered the Oval Office for his second term in January 2025.
It surged to a market cap of $6,384,122,903 (more than £5,200,000,000) – within just 12 hours.
It’s a marked contrast from Trump’s previous stance on crypto. In 2021, he claimed that Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, ‘just seems like a scam’, adding: ‘I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.’
Now he’s dubbed himself ‘The Crypto President’, while promising to build a ‘strategic Bitcoin reserve’.
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