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Donald Trump got his son’s age wrong during an interview on Thursday, saying that Barron Trump is 17 when he is actually 18.
The former president was speaking to Miami’s Telemundo 51 on May 9 when he was asked a question about his son Barron entering politics. The teen will be a delegate for Florida at the upcoming Republican National Convention in July.
“He’s pretty young, I will say. He’s 17. But if they can do that, I’m all for it,” Trump told Telemundo 51, NBC Universal’s Spanish-language network. However, Barron Trump turned 18 in March.
Newsweek has reached out to Donald Trump for comment via email.
Michael M. Santiago/JNI/Getty ImagesStar Max/GC Images
Barron Trump is the 77-year-old’s fifth child and is the son of his wife Melania Trump.
His older half-brothers Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump—whose mother is the late Czech-American businesswoman and Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump—will be joining him as delegates for Florida. His half-sister Tiffany Trump will also be a delegate for the state. Her mother is Trump’s second wife, TV star Marla Maples.
The Trumps have largely kept Barron out of the spotlight until now. After the business mogul was elected president in 2016, the couple waited until the end of the school year to move the 10-year-old into the White House, to avoid disrupting his education.
At the time, the Republican politician said Barron found the move from New York to Washington, D.C., “a little scary,” but that his son is “strong and smart and he gets it.”
Slovenian native Melania Trump has reportedly raised her son to be bilingual, and is said to be very protective of Barron. The high-schooler will be graduating from Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida, on May 17, with Donald Trump asking to pause his New York criminal trial to attend the ceremony.
The real estate tycoon is facing 34 felony charges of falsifying business documents, allegedly to conceal “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 general election. The adult film actress said that she and Trump had a one-night stand in 2006. The Apprentice star has denied the claim and charges against him.
Although presiding Judge Juan Merchan has granted Trump permission to attend his son’s graduation, the issue initially sparked outrage among MAGA supporters. Trump previously suggested he was banned from attending his son’s graduation ceremony, calling Merchan “seriously conflicted and corrupt.”
However, Merchan said Trump is fine to attend the ceremony, as long as the trial remained on schedule, later confirming it would “not be a problem.”
Trump, who is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate, will also reportedly deliver the key-note speech at the Minnesota Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner on the same date.
Update 05/10/24 4:10 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include further information on Barron Trump and Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Travelers are facing long waits at airport security checkpoints as the partial government shutdown continues to strain staffing for Transportation Security Administration workers. About 50,000 T.S.A. personnel have been working without pay for over a month, and hundreds have quit or called out of work.
On Monday, President Trump deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to some U.S. airports, saying that they would help ease long security lines. By Monday afternoon, the lines at the Atlanta, LaGuardia and Newark airports had become so long that those airports removed wait time estimates from their websites. Atlanta’s airport advised passengers to allow for at least four hours for security screenings.
Here are the latest available wait times at select major airports across the country.
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See wait times at airports across the country
A Chicago man arrested for allegedly gunning down a Loyola University student was in the country illegally and captured in part because of his “distinct” limp, officials said Monday.
Sheridan Gorman, 18, was killed shortly after 1 a.m. Thursday near Tobey Prinz Beach Park, less than a mile from campus, police said.
Jose Medina, 25, was arrested Friday night and booked on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and other gun-related charges in connection with the fatal shooting of Gorman, who was from the New York City suburb of Yorktown Heights.
Medina’s scheduled court appearance on Monday was delayed after the defendant was taken to the hospital, prosecutors said. The nature of Medina’s injury or illness was not immediately disclosed.
The suspect wore black clothes and a black mask when he allegedly shot Gorman in the back in the early morning hours of Thursday, according to a Chicago police arrest report released on Monday.
Witnesses described and nearby security cameras showed the suspect “walking with a distinct limp and slow gait,” according to the report.
Cameras then caught Medina entering his apartment house on N. Sheridan Road, and a building engineer identified the suspect as a resident, the police report said.
Medina had been previously “apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and released into the country,” according to a Department of Homeland Security statement.
The suspect was released again on June 19, 2023, following a shoplifting arrest in Chicago, federal officials said.
Gorman was “failed by open border policies and sanctuary politicians,” DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement.
The report didn’t make clear what, if any, motive the suspect might have had for the attack.
“We are gravely disappointed by the policies and failures that allowed this individual to remain in a position to commit this crime,” a statement from Gorman’s family said.
“When systems fail — whether through release decisions, lack of coordination, or unwillingness to act — the consequences are not abstract. They are real. And in our case, they are permanent,” the family said.
It wasn’t immediately clear on Monday if Medina had hired or been appointed a lawyer to speak on his behalf.
Gorman’s slaying could take center stage in the nation’s ongoing debate on immigration in the same manner as Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s murder in 2024.
The suspect in her slaying, Venezuelan citizen Jose Antonio Ibarra, illegally entered America in 2022 near El Paso, authorities have said.
The Trump administration frequently invokes Riley’s name in its justification of mass deportations and other anti-immigration actions.
Riley’s family has asked that their loved one’s name not be used in this public debate.
“I’d rather her not be such a political, how you say — it started a storm in our country,” father Jason Riley told NBC’s “TODAY” show a month after his daughter’s death, “and it’s incited a lot of people.”
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