Morning in Manhattan and a convoy of blacked out Secret Service SUVs emerge from an underground garage beneath Trump Tower.
With the New York police also on hand, they pull out into traffic, traveling smoothly and relatively swiftly downtown for more than fifty blocks using the bus lanes.
Then they arrive at New York University near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village where they disappear once again into another unmarked underground garage.
A few hours later, the entourage will take the same journey in reverse, after its sole VIP passenger emerges from a discreet side entrance on the campus and is ferried home again, having barely so much as stepped out into the open air.
Student life is usually challenging, exhilarating and chaotic but rarely dull. But for Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron – for whom this high security rigmarole is par for the course whenever he attends classes at NYU’s Stern School of Business – it’s proving a very different existence.
The panic of waking up too late and struggling to get to class on time must pale beside the stress of being endlessly watched like some kind of zoo animal by fellow undergraduates.
As for the standard extra-curricular benefits of student life – drugs, drink and hooking up at squalid parties? Not exactly.
There doesn’t even seem to be so much as a whiff of beer pong emanating from Barron’s freshman year, which so far has all the spontaneity and excitement of a state visit.
For Donald Trump ‘s youngest son, Barron – for whom this high security rigmarole is par for the course whenever he attends classes at NYU’s Stern School of Business – student life is proving a very different existence. (Pictured: Barron leaving Trump Tower for school).Â
Morning in Manhattan and a convoy of blacked out Secret Service SUVs emerge from an underground garage beneath Trump Tower.
There doesn’t even seem to be so much as a whiff of beer pong emanating from Barron’s freshman year, which so far has all the spontaneity and excitement of a state visit. (Pictured: NYU Stern).Â
As Barron attempts to cut a low profile and blend in as much as possible in an academic world that seethes with contempt for his father, his plainclothes bodyguards have at least spared him some embarrassment by dispensing with the Secret Service’s usual intimidating wardrobe of black suits and dark glasses.
They’ve adopted a more campus-friendly wardrobe of chinos and polo shirts. And, with the addition of campus ID lanyards, they look more like faculty staff – which is surely the intention.
Faculty staff, however, don’t dog a student’s every step as Barron’s four or five-strong Secret Service detail – who guard him at all times – are doing. While one of them accompanies him into each class, the others man the doors.
Insiders told the Daily Mail that they even accompany the 18-year-old son of the President and First Lady when he goes to the restroom.
Barron, who at a reported 6’9 could hardly blend into the background even if he wasn’t shadowed by a posse of bodyguards, has at least got past the stage where fellow students endlessly gawp and post snatched photos of him on social media (as was initially the case when he started last Fall).
However, while he has now become a reasonably familiar face on campus, that doesn’t mean he’s anything like the life and soul of the NYU party. And, inevitably for a college quartered in the pulsing heart of downtown Manhattan, NYU certainly has a hard partying reputation.
The Mail was told Barron, who will be 19 next month, once attempted to get into a bar near NYU in the trendy NoHo neighborhood but was refused entry when he couldn’t prove he was the legal drinking age of 21. And that would appear to be the full extent of his undergrad debauchery.
Which is hardly surprising given that, according to various sources, Barron has barely anything to do with the university beyond attending classes where he prefers to sit at the back.
Although he tends to gravitate to a small group of friends while he’s on campus, he reportedly does most of his socializing with them online after school’s finished when they indulge a shared passion for playing video games. (Barron, a former keen soccer player and fan of English club Arsenal, is understood to be a particular fan of the FIFA game).
That titbit emerged last December, and its implication that he was therefore somewhat nerdy was swiftly – and, perhaps, suspiciously – followed just days later by an anonymously sourced story in People magazine insisting that, actually, Barron was quite the ‘ladies man’ at NYU.
‘He’s really popular with the ladies,’ gushed an insider. ‘A lot of people seem to think he’s pretty attractive — yes, even liberal people like him.’
It chimed perfectly with half-brother Eric Trump’s insistence last October that Barron as the ‘most eligible bachelor in the world’.
But an NYU source scoffed at the ‘ladies’ man’ label, saying ‘he’s hardly here long enough to chat with anyone let alone flirt’.
Barron, who at a reported 6’9 could hardly blend into the background even if he wasn’t shadowed by a posse of bodyguards, has at least got past the stage where fellow students endlessly gawp and post snatched photos of him on social media.
In the past, its been reported that Trump , 18, doesn’t socialize much at school and mostly stays in his room, though he does play video games and soccer with classmates
A classmate told Vanity Fair that he once asked Barron if he wanted to play basketball. Barron ‘seemed interested’ but the other student got the feeling that, with his security detail hovering, ‘he wasn’t really allowed to do stuff’.
Many people complain that Barron deserves to be left alone to have a normal college experience, but is that remotely possible when his peers don’t feel he’s even able to shoot a few hoops with them?
Barron reportedly doesn’t hang around to socialize after classes finish for the day – and instead is whisked back into his Secret Service cocoon.
Some Stern students say the president’s son is such an elusive figure they’ve yet to spot him even once. And it certainly didn’t help matters that he only returned to NYU late in February, two weeks after attending his father’s inauguration.
Insiders told the Mail that Barron doesn’t even eat in the canteen.
If true, perhaps he was prompted by the example of his father who is reportedly terrified of being poisoned and is very choosy in his eating habits. According to White House chronicler Michael Wolff, germaphobe Trump Sr likes to eat at McDonald’s because he has a ‘longtime fear of being poisoned’ and prefers fast-food outlets as ‘nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely pre-made’.
People who know Barron say he’s rather more affable and considerate than some members of his family are usually given credit for.
Stories of any antisocial behavior are few and far between. The Mail was told he’s been known to take occasional cell phone calls in class but is otherwise polite and friendly.
Of course, a good few of his fellow students and teachers must be itching to take offense.
He is studying on a liberal campus in a liberal city where a glance through the website of the student newspaper, the Washington Square News, reveals few articles that don’t try to squeeze in a jab at President Trump.
One example, from a recent opinion piece, begins with the following line: ‘NYU is no longer safe under President Donald Trump’s second administration.’
Given this level of leftwing preciousness, it’s not hard to see why Barron might want to keep his head down.
In fact, campus insiders claim, when asked by fellow students which political party he supported in the weeks before November’s presidential election, Barron said he didn’t align himself with any of them.
Cutting off that particular line of conversation was probably a clever move, even if business school students tend to be more conservative than the norm.
And it isn’t just fellow undergrads who may be hostile.
Kaya Walker, the ex-president of NYU College Republicans, says she recalled one of her professors ‘jokingly’ saying that Barron ‘doesn’t really belong here’.
Such is the hysteria over Barron among some Republicans – who have already ordained him as the most likely Trump offspring to continue a political dynasty – that Ms Walker was forced to resign last week just a few days after she told Vanity Fair that he was ‘sort of like an oddity on campus – he goes to class, he goes home’.
That statement was surely correct, if indelicately phrased, but was swiftly lambasted as ‘inappropriate’ by the College Republicans of America organization, of which she’d been the NYU chapter president.
The group’s head, Will Donahue, instead urged Barron to join the organization, calling him ‘the future of the conservative movement’. He added: ‘Strong leadership is built on resilience, courage and the humility to rise above petty hostility – qualities that Barron has already demonstrated.’
Such gushing praise of Barron, not to mention the confident expectation that he’ll follow his father into politics, has been a common feature among many Trump supporters lately.
At rallies and elsewhere, he gets wild standing ovations whenever his father so much as mentions his name to crowds, TV cameras sometimes cutting to Barron’s older siblings to catch their reactions.
And yet for all that breathless enthusiasm, Barron hasn’t actually said a single word publicly about politics.
After a childhood in which his mother, Melania, did everything she could to keep him out of the spotlight, Barron never posts on social media, hasn’t made any public speeches and has rarely put in an appearance at his father’s political events.
Such gushing praise of Barron (pictured at his father’s inauguration), not to mention the confident expectation that he’ll follow his father into politics, has been a common feature among many Trump supporters lately.Â
After a childhood in which his mother, Melania, did everything she could to keep him out of the spotlight, Barron never posts on social media, hasn’t made any public speeches and has rarely put in an appearance at his father’s political events.
Admittedly, he has tried to follow in his father’s footsteps in other ways. In January, it was revealed that, even though he’d only just finished at high school, Barron had launched his own luxury property company with two business-minded young friends last July.
Barron, who according to his mother liked to dress in a business suit as a child, set up ‘Trump, Fulcher & Roxburgh Capital’ – incorporated in low-tax Wyoming – with a classmate at his $40,000-a-year Palm Beach school and a Republican congressman’s cousin.
The company said it aimed to focus on ‘high end’ projects including golf courses and expensive properties in Utah, Arizona and Idaho – just the sort of thing Trump Sr would have gone for – but the firm was dissolved only four months later in November.
Cameron Roxburgh, Barron’s ex-classmate turned business partner, told Newsweek that they had wound up the enterprise to avoid media attention after Trump was re-elected president.
Perhaps Barron will now concentrate on his studies instead and leave the Trump family’s time-honored pursuit of making money aside until he’s graduated.
‘He loves his classes and professors,’ Melania said in an interview last October. ‘He’s doing well, he’s thriving and he’s enjoying to be in New York City again.’
However, she also conceded that her only child was aware that he was hardly getting a taste of real college life.
‘I don’t think it’s possible for him to be a normal student,’ she said.
Barron isn’t due to graduate until 2028 – almost at the end of his father’s second term.
‘Everybody knows that it’s an uphill battle being a Republican at NYU,’ wailed ousted student conservative leader Kaya Walker after her ‘oddity’ remark. And how much steeper that climb, surely, when your last name’s Trump.
But at least he doesn’t have to worry about getting his bicycle stolen.
