While most people agree that minor children of politicians are always off-limits, the use of them for political mud-slinging is inevitable. For Barron Trump, this has ranged from the relatively harmless to what-were-they-thinking levels. Like in 2018, when the actor Peter Fonda, expressing his anger over Trump's family separation policy at the border, tweeted, "We should rip Barron Trump from his mother's arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles" (via The New York Times). The year before, "Saturday Night Live" writer Katie Rich tweeted, "Barron will be this country's first homeschool shooter" (via The Washington Post), a joke that got her suspended from the show.
During Donald Trump's first impeachment hearing in 2019, Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan was making a point about the limits of presidential power when she said (via CNN), "...while the president can name his son Barron, he can't make him a baron." This was hardly insulting, but it was being televised, and Melania Trump was furious. She tweeted, "You should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it."
However, even Barron's father wasn't above using his son to try and win political points. According to The Hill, at a rally not long after the impeachment hearing comments drew his wife's ire, Donald tried to put down Senator Elizabeth Warren by saying, "I could have Barron Trump go into Central Park and he'd ... get a bigger crowd."
