It was nearly 3 a.m. when President-elect Donald Trump hit the stage in Florida after securing the presidency. Melania smiled and waved. Donald Trump Jr. and the UFC chief Dana White were chatting and laughing along the curtains. Hovering above the joyous fray stood a key figure in the 2024 presidential race—18-year-old Barron Trump.

At 6’9”, Trump and Melania’s only child is a towering and unmissable addition to the incoming MAGA White House. The youngest of Trump’s five children, Barron has acted as a youth liaison to the campaign, coordinating and signing off on a series of interviews that the senior Trump participated in geared explicitly at appealing to younger voters. 

The strategy worked. 

Of the 41 million eligible voters between the ages of 18–24, Trump made significant gains against Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2020, Trump lost the Gen Z demo to President Joe Biden by 24 percent. He more than halved that figure on Tuesday, losing to Harris by just 11 percent. In the 18–29 age bracket, Trump performed better than any GOP presidential candidate of the last two decades. And according to NBC exit polls, Trump secured the young white male vote outright. 

As strategists called on Trump to moderate his message and focus on winning white suburban women, he listened to the instincts of Barron, who suggested he target their sons.

In the final months of the 2024 election, Trump appeared on a number of podcasts listened to by millions of young American men. Trump golfed with the LIV Tour star Bryson DeChambeau; the pair listened to Elvis. Trump sat with the former MIT professor-turned-famous-talker Lex Fridman, who openly pondered the “spiritual benefits” of psychedelic drugs with the former president. During Trump’s appearance with comedian Theo Von, the Arkansas hellraiser admitted to being a recovering cocaine addict. Trump listened sincerely. 

The podcast tour was crafted by 27-year-old Alex Bruesewitz, a social media influencer with nearly half a million followers on 𝕏. When Bruesewitz pitched the tour to Trump, the Don only had one question: “Have you talked this over with Barron?” asked Trump. When Bruesewitz replied “No,” Trump instructed him to reach out to Barron for approval.

Barron signed off on the schedule. Weeks after surviving an assassination attempt, Trump met with 23-year-old streamer Adin Ross at Mar-a-Lago. The Gen Z influencer presented Trump with the kind of gift that a 23-year-old American man would love—a Cybertruck wrapped with a photo of Trump surviving the attempt on his life. 

But Trump’s offbeat talk circuit wasn’t done. Only a week before the November election, Trump landed his white whale—a much-requested appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Spotify’s $100-million man had repeatedly stated in the run-up that he wouldn’t interview Trump or Harris because he didn’t want to tilt the scales. But with less than 14 days to the election, Rogan announced he would interview Trump for his massive audience.

The conversation lasted three hours and spanned a variety of topics. Trump was his affluent and affable self, weaving between subjects with ease. At one point, he credited Barron with helping the campaign reach a younger demographic. 

“I have a son who is very smart and tall, Barron, right? He knows all about you and guys I’ve never heard of. He said, ‘Dad, you don’t know how big they are,’” Trump said of Barron. “It’s a whole new world out there. Have you seen the numbers? Billions of hits, it’s crazy. A Republican is always down 30 with young people, I’m up 30.”

Harris was given the same opportunity, but refused to fly to Austin to sit for several hours with Rogan. There isn’t a universe in which Rogan could’ve swung the 2024 race to Harris, but her refusal to meet Rogan’s meager demands shows how little her campaign worried about Trump peeling away young voters. Her campaign couldn’t have been more wrong. 

The 2024 election was the election where new media firmly took control from the powers that be. From 𝕏 to TikTok, the surge in new organizations and personalities that dictated the tone and outcome of the race skyrocketed. And the Trump campaign, with his son Barron signing off on appearances, intuitively recognized this in a way that Harris didn’t.

The Barron memes filtered across 𝕏 early Wednesday morning following Trump’s reelection. Autists were comparing Barron to the Lisan al Gaib, a title used for the prophet or messiah in Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. Others noted that Barron stood stone-faced behind his father as every other member of the Trump family smiled in a post-victory party. “I can smell their fear,” read one viral post that showed Barron and Donald standing next to one another. 

Republicans had all but given up on the youth vote after decades of being systematically repelled at the ballot box. All that changed this year. Students at universities across America poured into their quads and ran through their halls in celebration of Trump’s victory. Videos of young men and women performing Trump’s trademark dance are racking up hundreds of millions of views across social media. The permission structure has been broken. The age-old axiom that the youth are liberal and the old conservative has been turned upon its head. 

Trump’s willingness to reach out to what was viewed as an unwinnable demographic speaks to the man and the politician he is—unburdened by what has been. Where Harris’s running mate, Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Walz, used his son as a tearful subplot, Trump harnessed Zoomer Power to turn the table and change the course of American history forever. None of it would have been possible without Barron. 

Only days before he survived an assassin’s bullet, Trump boasted about Barron at a rally in Doral, Florida. “He’s a very special guy,” Trump touted as Barron rose in a navy suit and raised his fist in celebration. Months later, Trump would honor his son again, calling him the “King of the Internet” at an October rally. The crowd loved it.

What lies next for Barron remains to be seen. He’s technically still a freshman at NYU, where he is enrolled in the Stern School of Business. Should he want to be closer to his father’s administration, Barron could transfer to a college in DC or simply drop out of school altogether. The latter seems less likely. Whatever path the young Trump should choose, the role he played in the 2024 election will be lionized forever.

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