Every few weeks, a new earworm takes over on TikTok. This summer, there were remixes of Kamala Harris’ musings on coconut trees and existing in context. In October, we had the SNL “Espresso” parody. And now, we have a little bop about a suitcase—adapted from archival footage of a preschool-aged Barron Trump.
In the video the clip is taken from, Barron and Melania Trump are seen paying a visit to Trump Tower, in a segment filmed in 2010 for Larry King. Barron grabs a Louis Vuitton briefcase (one that reportedly now sells for almost $10,000), jumps up and down, and utters the now infamous words: “I like my soot-case” in a Slovenian accent resembling his mother’s. The clip was uploaded by the Daily Mail more than a week ago, and has 55 million views to date.
While the audio itself took off at first, in classic viral meme fashion, someone soon turned it into a song. The club remix has been used nearly 40,000 times, and even brands have jumped on the bandwagon.
It makes sense why people grabbed onto it. I mean, first of all, it is funny, and while I didn’t even realize it was Barron at first, it is a little incredible when you do make the connection. He really sounds like his mother! There’s simply a level of intrigue around Trump and Melania’s only son. But as catchy as it is … I feel sorry for the kid.
Well, not kid, not quite, anymore. He’s 18 years old and almost 7 feet tall. But as the algorithm continued to feed me the video again and again and again, I couldn’t help but think about how he might feel.
I know Donald Trump isn’t a typical politician, but for just a moment, think about Barron more generally as a child of a politician. He has an unimpeachable right to privacy—something even Chelsea Clinton agrees with.
And while there have been a flurry of stories about how Barron potentially helped his dad win by introducing him to the wild world of far-right podcasting and the manosphere, for now, I am inclined to think he was just being a young person trying to help his dad—which isn’t that unique for presidential kids!
A friend put it well: It would be different if it was say, someone like Hope Walz, who chose to campaign with her dad and become a public personality. Similarly, Ella Emhoff took the stage to support her Momala during this election season. But Barron, like his mother, seems to try to keep out of the public eye as much as possible. And people making fun of him for being a literal child with an accent doesn’t help that. Also, I wouldn’t know what a briefcase is at that age either!
It’s worth remembering that according to Melania’s book, Barron also has a history of being bullied because of information propagated online. In 2016, for example, comedian Rosie O’Donnell tweeted that Barron—who was 10 years old at the time—had autism, leading to a slew of online and real-life bullying.
I also hate that the video was posted by a media outlet in the first place, shared presumably to fuel the internet’s fascination with Barron and what Donald thinks of his son. (The same outlet also recently posted a video of a contemporary Barron at Mar-A-Lago, noting that “Barron packed his sootcase and returned to Mar-a-Lago.”)
I would feel differently if, for whatever reason, Melania had decided to post the video for a throwback Thursday or something; there’s perhaps some level of consent in that. But I would be absolutely mortified if videos from my childhood were released and remixed by random people for the whole world to critique. And I would feel just awful if my youthful mispronunciations were screamed at me while I’m trying to juggle my first semester of college.
I know, I know, the internet will be the internet. There’s no controlling what happens to a clip once it’s posted. Apparently, now, people are trying to fit themselves into suitcases while miming the clip—and hurting themselves while doing so. (There’s even a TikTok warning that “participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt.”) The way this has spiraled out makes me reflect on how we approach viral trends that involve children, especially those who are in the spotlight because of their parents.
Maybe it is a good thing after all he’s not living in the dorms after all—way too many opportunities for people to do live suitcase-based jokes at him this week.
