For a young man who has spent so much of his life kept fiercely out of the spotlight, Barron Trump made his TV debut at a shockingly young age.

He was just two months old when his proud parents allowed Gayle King – then working on The Oprah Winfrey Show – to come and coo over him in the baroque splendor of their $100 million penthouse in Trump Tower.

But first, Melania Trump dutifully gushed over her husband’s paternal instincts: ‘He’s amazing, you know. He takes [Barron] in the morning when he wakes up. And he brings him in his room and they’re watching TV together and they’re reading the papers.’

Then it was off to baby Barron’s grand nursery, a corner room with sweeping views of Manhattan and stuffed full of huge soft toys, where The Donald borrowed his son – dressed in a flouncy old-fashioned baby boy dress – from the nanny so he could hold him for the cameras.

‘See the little delicate hands,’ said the business tycoon who would one day be mocked over the small size of his own hands.

Then King got down to the tough questions.

‘So Donald, you’re not opposed to changing diapers, you just haven’t had to do it,’ she quizzed. ‘But you know how to do it?’

‘I would be able to do it, yes,’ replied the father of five.

But before King had time to ask him to prove it, Barron started wailing and a relieved-looking Trump passed him back to his mother.

Eighteen years later, Barron is rather bigger – at 6’7, he looms over his 6’3 father – but still very much tied to Mom.

He comes of age today, after a high-profile childhood that, if physically pampered, cannot have been emotional plain-sailing with such a polarizing man for a dad.

The first boy to grow up in the White House since JFK Jr in 1963, he has lived through scandal after scandal – shielded, as best she could, by a highly protective mother.

In January 2018, he was not yet 12 when the media was engulfed by porn star Stormy Daniels’s bombshell claims that she had an affair with Donald just four months after Barron was born.

During his presidency, Trump’s most ardent critics even resorted to criticizing the young boy as a means of attacking his father.

Comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who had reason to hate Trump for once calling her a ‘pig’ and a ‘degenerate’, shared a video in 2016 making wild and totally unfounded claims that Barron had autism.

O’Donnell later publicly apologized to Melania, but the damage was already done. The following year, during Trump’s inauguration, SNL writer Katie Rich tweeted: ‘Barron will be this country’s first homeschool shooter’.

In fact, the slurs hurled at Barron got so bad, that another former First Child – from across the aisle – spoke up on his behalf.

Chelsea Clinton tweeted: ‘Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does-to be a kid.’

And Trump Sr deserved the chance to be a dad. 

Although he would boast in 2015 that ‘I’ve always prided myself on being a good father’, biographers say he agreed with Melania that if she had a child, he wouldn’t be actively involved in their day-to-day upbringing. (Trump wasn’t even in the delivery room, although he suggested ‘Barron’ as a name).

Melania had help when Barron was very small, but she later insisted on raising him largely by herself – with considerable assistance from her Slovenian parents.

While some – Melania included – claimed to see a strong resemblance between Donald and Barron, nicknamed ‘Little Donald’, when he was a baby, others now insist that in one crucial respect he’s very different.

‘I cannot stress enough how kind and polite Barron is… he’s just a great kid,’ Stephanie Grisham, former White House Press Secretary and Melania’s one-time chief-of-staff told DailyMail.com.

Grisham added that she saw a ‘definite difference’ between Barron and his much older half-siblings – who include Ivanka, Donald Jr, Eric and Tiffany.

‘Just very, very kind and humble and empathetic and smart,’ Grisham said. ‘Not that I’m saying his half-siblings aren’t smart at all.’

That also doesn’t mean to say that Barron missed out on the same cosseted upbringing enjoyed by his elder siblings, who have earned something of a reputation for being a chip off the Trump block.

Melania has always indulged Barron, admitting that she allowed him to draw on the walls of his playroom for fear of stifling his creativity.

‘His imagination is growing and important,’ she told Parenting magazine in 2012, adding that – as fitting his grandiose name – young Baron had an entire floor of Trump Tower to himself.

At night, Melania would slaver his skin with her own-brand caviar moisturizer.

And at five, he announced that he wanted to become a businessman like his father, preferring to wear a suit and tie than jeans and a T-shirt.

‘He is a very strong-minded… He is independent and opinionated and knows exactly what he wants,’ Melania told Parenting mag.

In 2016, when Barron was 10, she did another interview, this time with Us Weekly, telling the publication that she was at home ‘most of the time’ with Barron, ‘giving him morals and tradition and teaching him values’.

According to Stephanie Grisham, for family-oriented Melania, Barron always ‘came first’.

‘She did things very much her way,’ Grisham added. ‘But she also did a great job in keeping him shielded from a lot of the animosity.’

Barron was educated at a succession of the smartest and most expensive private schools, including Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where his mother would take him to and from school in a chauffeured SUV.

She’d also cook his breakfast every morning and prepare his lunch.

He was still only 10 when his father became President and, as First Lady, Melania had to contemplate giving up the very private and independent existence she cherished in New York.

She famously insisted on staying in the Big Apple for almost the first five months of the presidency – with Trump alone in DC – so Barron could finish his school year.

Trump said he was sympathetic – claiming that his son found the idea of leaving his friends and his Manhattan comfort zone ‘a little scary’. That feeling cannot have been improved when, after anti-Trump protesters started picketing Trump Tower, Melania had the Secret Service take over doing the daily school run.

Melania continued to break with White House convention in not sending Barron to the Quaker school, Sidwell Friends, where previous presidential children including the Clintons, Bushes and Obamas had all been educated.

Instead, the Trumps plumped for Barron attending the $50,000-a-year St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in one of DC’s smartest suburbs in Potomac, Maryland.

Some Trump critics couldn’t resist taking it out on Barron, mocking his hair, clothes and towering height, which one wit compared to two kids inside a trench coat.

However, Barron soon found an early distraction from the pressures of First Child life in soccer. In 2017 he joined the Under-12 division of professional team DC United, playing in midfield and impressing players of the main team with his in-depth knowledge of the sport.

His other interests include sneakers – he has an impressive collection – and computers. In fact, his father claimed 2022 that Barron was rapidly able to break into his laptop when it locked him out during a conference that year.

So much younger than his siblings that he was effectively an only child, Barron gets on best with Tiffany, say insiders.

He soon became bilingual, learning to speak his mother’s native Slovenian so well that he could phone his grandmother – who died in January – and not have to resort to English during their conversations.

Melania’s parents, Viktor and the late Amalija Knavs (a former car dealer and textile worker respectively), moved from Slovenia to New York in 2017, before following their daughter to DC and later – after Trump left office – to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.

They were very close to Barron and are said to have been ‘instrumental’ in his upbringing, an insider told People last year.

In March this year, the magazine confirmed what appeared to have long been obvious from his rare public appearances – that Barron shares his mother’s personality.

‘Barron is shy and reserved, and she has been a good mother to him all of these years,’ a source said.

As for his relationship with Donald, White House chronicler Michael Wolff controversially claimed in 2019 that Trump resented his son for becoming taller than him, adding: ‘His son is effectively not at all a part of his life.’

But Stephanie Grisham – who saw the family in an intimate setting – strongly disputes any perception of the father-son relationship as hostile or distant.

‘I saw Barron spend a lot of time with his father in the [White House] residence,’ she said. ‘I would see them joke around quite a bit.’

If he was a rare sighting during Trump’s presidency, Barron has been seen even less since he moved with his parents to Mar-a-Lago.

He is due to graduate this year from the nearby $41,500 Oxbridge Academy. The school was founded in 2011 by billionaire William Koch, brother to Republican super-donors Charles and David Koch (who last year deserted Trump to back his nomination rival Nikki Haley).

What’s next for Barron?

Insiders say he will be going to college but won’t speculate on where or other future plans.

‘Did you know when you were 17?’ asked a source. One confident prediction has been made however: wherever Barron goes next, his mother will want to move with him.

By Taryn Pedler

Published: 08:53 EDT, March 18, 2024 | Updated: 12:10 EDT, March 18, 2024

The state of Kansas will pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit over the death of Adrian Jones, who was murdered by his father and fed to pigs.

The lawsuit, filed in 2017 by the child’s mother and relatives, said the state child protection agency took him from an abusive home before starving and torturing him.

Police found the 7-year-old’s remains in a pigsty on the property of his father and stepmother Michael and Heather Jones in November 2015.

Both are serving 25 years to life sentences for his murder, after beating Adrian and locking him in a shower stall and watching him deteriorate on surveillance camera.

Gov. Laura Kelly and top leaders of the Kansas Legislature approved the settlement Tuesday during a brief public meeting.

The Kansas Department for Children and Families received reports that Adrian was being abused several years before his death.

Their last physical contact with him was nearly four years before his death, according to more than 2,000 pages of documents released by the agency in 2017.

The records showed that all three moved regularly between communities in Kansas and Missouri.

The lawsuit argued that the state and social workers “could have intervened at any time and saved Adrian,” but “chose to act as disinterested bystanders.”

The Kansas agency argued that frequent moves made it difficult to monitor the boy.

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, one of the lawmakers who approved the settlement, said she believes the state bears “a lot of responsibility” for what happened.

Kelly said the problem wasn’t the potential harm in a lawsuit, but the lawsuit distracting from “the mission at hand” to improve the child welfare system.

“It really had to do with us wanting to get that settled and not spend time litigating in court for months, maybe even years,” she said.

Matt Birch, a lawyer representing the family, said: “This has been a long journey for Adrian’s family.

“The most important thing for the family was to hopefully make a change and make sure this is less likely to happen in the future.”

Police had responded to the home in 2015 for a domestic violence call, with Heather Jones accusing Michael Jones of beating and choking her.

Once there, she blurted out that the boy’s father had fed him to their six feeder pigs two months earlier, in late September.

The investigation into her claims revealed harrowing evidence of years of abuse with Heather, sickeningly proud of the way she tortured her stepson and captured it in photographs.

He was locked behind a plywood door in a shower, forced to stand in standing water up to his neck for hours, chained, tied up, starved and beaten.

His stepmother called him “the boy” instead of using his first name. While she and Adrian’s father cared for their six girls, he was accused of abuse of the worst kind.

The injuries photographed included deep cuts to his face and lips, suffered while trying to fight his way out of the cardboard cell his parents had created for him in a shower stall.

He was also photographed with a cutting board tube taped to his chest and strapped to an inversion table.

The pair were arrested in 2015. Heather pleaded guilty to murder in November 2016 and was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 25 years.

In May 2017, Michael Jones received the same sentence after also pleading guilty in March that year.

In 2013, Adrian told a staff member at the Children’s Department in Missouri, where the family lived at the time, that his father kept hitting him in the head.

“My dad keeps hitting me on the head and punching me in the stomach and my mom keeps pulling on my ears and it really hurts.

‘Mom and dad lock me in my room alone. Mommy and daddy can’t feed me,” he said during the interview, which was promoted by an anonymous phone call raising concerns about Adrian’s well-being.

Shockingly, he was allowed to continue living with the couple and shortly thereafter they moved to Kansas City, Kansas.

When he died, Adrian was a little bag of bones and his last months were hell.

Instead of a proper burial, the child was fed to pigs that his father had bought specifically to get rid of his emaciated body.

The boy’s death was followed by a multi-year overhaul of child welfare system laws.

In 2021, “Adrian’s Law” required officers and case workers to visually observe children suspected of being victims of abuse or neglect.

The state has also taken steps to improve training for doctors to recognize abuse and provide “wraparound” services to struggling families.

Birch said he and the family hope that with the lawsuit and the 2021 law, “more eyes will be on these children.”

Adrian’s relatives also filed a lawsuit in 2017 in Jackson County, Missouri, also in the Kansas City area, against officials in that state.

The case was settled in 2020, but details were not immediately available and Birch said he could not comment.

EXCLUSIVE

A 15-year-old boy said to have a “disturbing infatuation” with sexual violence has been accused of sexually assaulting another male student, raising questions about why he was allowed to attend a special needs school.

Daily Mail Australia can reveal alarming claims about child protection failures by the NSW Department of Education after Jacob* was accused of sexually assaulting another Year 9 boy, Tom*, between July and September last year.

NSW Police allege the attacks took place both on and off school grounds and came after Jacob befriended Tom, who has autism, on Snapchat and began bombarding him with sexually explicit images.

Jacob then allegedly performed sex acts on Tom – so nauseating they could not be described in detail – and hit him across the back five times with a rope, according to a police document tendered to the children’s court.

Police will allege that Jacob’s behavior towards Tom took a huge toll on both the boy and his family, and that Jacob threatened to harm himself when Tom tried to distance himself from the friendship.

In court documents, NSW Police allege Jacob is a repeat child molester, with a history of “continually engaging in unsolicited and unwanted sexual (crime) towards other people without their consent.”

“The young person has a disturbing infatuation with (imposing) sexual behavior on others and himself,” the document said.

“(Also) shows violence towards his victims if they do not comply with his demands.”

How the police investigation took shape

A whistleblower told Daily Mail Australia that concerns were raised at the school about Jacob’s behavior in August 2023 after students disclosed alarming information to their families.

The whistleblower said the school was told that Jacob had allegedly sent explicit photos to peers and solicited others in return, and that he had pressured other students to perform sex acts.

Jacob had also reportedly bragged to peers that he had been accused of raping a younger relative, which resulted in him being removed from his family home and placed in out-of-home care.

However, the whistleblower claims that school staff dismissed the alleged behavior as “boys being boys” and that the admitted sex offender “also had a right to go to school.”

Tom’s relatives took it outside the school and reported the matter to the police, after which an investigation was launched.

Jacob was subsequently charged in December with four charges relating to his interactions with Tom, including assault, physical assault, stalking or intimidation and using a carriage service to send indecent material.

However, the whistleblower claims that even while police investigated, Jacob was allowed to remain enrolled at the school until he was eventually forced to leave in January.

During that time, Tom was initially forced to continue attending the same school as his alleged attacker, before ultimately refusing to attend.

That’s what the court documents claimed during that time, Tom has “become withdrawn for fear of being attacked by the younger one.”

‘The victim and his parents believe he can no longer go to school because of the young person’s sexual and aggressive behavior towards the victim.’

The case is currently before the children’s court.

Since the charges in December, Daily Mail Australia understands Jacob has been charged with multiple other offenses relating to separate cases.

NSW Police told Daily Mail Australia it could not comment on the police investigation as the cases are before the Children’s Court.

Education Minister Prue Car was contacted for comment.

School system under fire

A former employee of Youth Justice NSW’s sex offender program – which oversees support services for accused young people – told Daily Mail Australia the school would likely have known about Jacob’s criminal background.

The ex-child protection worker said a comprehensive assessment of the child’s history would have been carried out at the time of registration as he was enrolled in a special needs school.

She said any warning signs or behavioral issues — including previous interactions with police — should be documented by staff as part of the intake process and when developing student behavior plans.

Additionally, she said any additional information that may arise later would have been added to the student’s file.

However, the insider said the school’s inability to implement a safety plan to effectively manage Jacob’s sexualized behavior exposed systemic problems within the education sector.

While staff at special education schools may be trained to help students with certain behavioral problems, the insider said recognizing risk factors for child abuse is a specialized skill that many teachers do not possess.

“Schools often do not have enough staff with specific training to recognize risky sexualized behavior,” she said.

‘This puts other students at risk and leaves the child exhibiting the behavior in question without support to overcome it.’

The incident raises questions about how many teenage abusers are currently in NSW schools without proper facilities to protect other students.

Although Jacob also has the right to an education, a school whistleblower accused the school system of gross negligence by failing to act decisively when concerns were raised.

‘The school has a duty of care. “If you send your children to school, you think they will be safe,” they said.

‘They knew. They were very aware of it.

“But they did nothing to protect them [the other students].’

The NSW Department of Education declined to comment on the case.

*Names changed for legal reasons

For confidential support, please contact:

Lifeline 13 11 14

Children’s helpline 1800 55 1800

1800 RESPECT

• Wesley Hinton became angry after an argument and grabbed a knife before his 10-year-old sister called 911 during the Jan. 20 incident
• Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies arrived and said Wesley ran the knife over parts of his body, including his wrists and abdomen, and held it to his chest.
• Surveillance footage shows officers begging him to drop the gun for at least 30 minutes before he appeared to reach for it again and was tasered

By Kamal Sultan for Dailymail.Com

Published: 08:40 EDT, March 16, 2024 | Updated: 10:04 AM EDT, March 16, 2024

Kali Uchis And Don Toliver celebrate the birth of their first child.

Uchis, 30, and Toliver, 29, announced the birth of their son in a joint Instagram post on Thursday, March 14.

“You are everything we could have hoped for and more. Thank you God for our beautiful, healthy baby boy and thank you all for the good energy along the way,” the singers captioned a video of them holding their son. “May our home and your homes be blessed with peace, happiness and health forever.”

The happy couple received numerous cheerful comments, including from Halle Bailey, who wrote: “Congratulations beautiful!!”

Toliver also showed clips of the mother and son in his new “Deep in the watermusic video, which he released on Thursday. The “Bandit” singer references the birth of their baby in the lyrics, “Deep in the water, as far as I can see/Deep in the water, from your pregnancy.”

The couple revealed that Uchis was expecting in January 2024, when they appeared together in her “Tu Corazón Es Mio” music video.

Uchis and Toliver started dating in 2020, and he confirmed their relationship in a July 2021 interview with W magazine.

“We’re not a crazy crowd or anything,” he told the publication. “We just feel.”

Toliver revealed that he traveled to Colombia with Uchis to visit her family and shoot a few music videos for his 2021 album The life of a DON. “I already had it in my mind to go out and make a video with her in it, to make it a realistic situation,” he said at the time.

A year later, Toliver and Uchis made their red carpet debut as a couple at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards in April 2022.

The pair enjoy working together, and he featured his Grammy award-winning partner on the song ‘4 Me’ on his 2023 album, Love sick.

Uchis stars in the music video as a waitress in a restaurant, while Toliver pours his heart out to her. “I need to hold my bae, baby/ I need to feel your heart, bae, baby/ I need you in my arms,” he moans.

That same year, Toliver appeared in Uchis’ “Fantasy” Red Moon in Venus album. In the song, he revealed that he wanted to have a baby with her, singing, “This is my fantasy / I want to make me a family.”

During an interview in March 2023 on The breakfast club, Toliver said this is the most “invested” relationship he has ever been in and thinks he has found the “one” when it comes to the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with.

“Yes, I would love it,” Toliver said when asked if he wanted to get married in the future. ‘If you’ve been with someone for two to three years, plus me and my girl are still in a relationship like that, you kind of know if you really want to be with that person. That’s kind of how I feel, us here.

Taylor Swift‘s lead guitarist Paul Sidoti and his wife, Ashley Sidotiwelcomed baby No. 2 amid the international leg of the Eras tour.

“This morning we welcomed our little miracle Sammy Sidoti into the world,” Paul, 52, announced via Instagram on Tuesday, March 12. “Our prayers have been answered and mom and baby are doing great. Big sister Scarlett is over the moon about having a baby brother. All my love to @ashsidoti.”

A sign next to the newborn bore his full name, Samuel Paul Sidoti, birth information and the phrase, “He is perfect!”

Fans flooded the comments congratulating the parents. “Another Swiftie is born,” one user wrote, while another added: “What a great way to end the first leg of the tour.” A separate commenter said: “Sending the BEST wishes to you and your entire family! I’m glad you could be there for them.”

Sammy’s birth seemed like perfect timing, as Swift and her band recently completed a series of shows in Tokyo, Japan, followed by stops in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore. The Eras Tour will resume in Paris, France from May.

Fans of Swift know that Paul has been by her side for most of her career, as they began collaborating on her self-titled debut album 17 years ago. In addition to playing guitar and singing, Paul has been touring with Swift since her second studio album. Fearless. He was prominently featured in the 2023 concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.

In addition to their professional success, Paul’s personal life is also closely linked to his work at Swift. He proposed to Ashley during the 2011 Speak world tour now in Dublin, Ireland, and they married later that year during the American leg of the tour.

Paul has only positive things to say about Swift and her music. He reflected on their long friendship and Swift’s incredible genre-spanning career while wishing her a happy birthday in December 2023.

“I can’t believe I’ve known you half your life,” he wrote via Instagram. “I knew all those years ago how incredibly special and talented you are. So proud of everything you have achieved. I am very proud to always be by your side on that magical stage.”

A nine-year-old boy who spent years of his life battling recurring brain tumors is now climbing to the top of Mount Everest to raise money for charity.

Arthur Middleton, from Lincolnshire, had a difficult start to life when he was born prematurely at 26 weeks in 2014.

Just before his third birthday, Arthur’s parents, Claire and Henry, noticed that he was having seizures, feeling nauseous, slurring his words and losing the use of his right hand.

After an MRI scan, the couple was then told that their son had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball.

‘It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. You just go into overdrive and think about what it means,” Claire, 41, told MailOnline.

They were then blue-lit to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, in 2017, where he underwent a successful operation and the family would move to North Carolina in January that year.

After learning to walk again, Arthur had a scan in December and the family were told the tumor had returned to the size of a ping-pong ball.

Ex-lawyer Claire said this was ‘quite unusual’ for a low-grade tumor as it was quite ‘aggressive’. Arthur then underwent another operation to remove this tumor as they crossed the pond.

The parents were then told that despite two operations to remove the tumor, it continued to grow back and that the next step was to try chemotherapy.

But after five months it stopped working.

Claire and Henry, who work in finance, then found a clinical trial in America and managed to get Arthur enrolled in it.

“We put him on medication that is actually like a targeted therapy because his tumor cells have a certain genetic mutation and we were fortunate that they were testing different genetic mutations,” the stay-at-home mom said. .

‘Luckily he has one of the genetic mutations that one of the drugs targets, so we confronted him about that in America.’

Arthur remained in the trial for two years and within the first few months the size of the tumor had reduced by 80 percent.

Over the next few years on this drug, Arthur was completely stable.

But after the trial was completed, he had to stop taking the medication and the tumor started growing again.

Claire said the family were able to access this drug after a difficult time when they returned to Britain in early 2022.

“He continues to take that and it’s kept everything stable for five years now and he takes it every day,” Claire said.

“He goes to school and his immune system isn’t compromised or anything. We are fortunate that we are currently in a stable situation.

‘Now that we’ve learned more about it, we feel like we’re one of the lucky ones to have been diagnosed with low grade.

‘Even though it was very large when they found it and it had long-term health consequences for him, we’re lucky it’s low quality.’

‘His journey to the brain tumor has been very difficult and it is still a bit ongoing. I don’t think we have any illusions that we are one of the lucky ones.’

Now Arthur is raising money for The Brain Tumor Charity by climbing Mount Everest – a whopping 8,849 metres.

Although he has a weakness on the side of his body, it hasn’t stopped him from achieving his goal of raising awareness about brain tumors.

‘[I’m] honestly so proud. He had been talking about doing this for a while and we were worried that he wouldn’t be able to do it physically as it is still a challenge.

‘But we were talking about New Year’s resolutions with the family and he said, ‘I’m going to climb the mountain to raise money.’

‘It’s great as a mother to see how proud and how successful he is in what he does. He struggles academically at school and with sports.

“He’s not going to be team captain, but this is his thing and he’s very proud of himself.

‘He’s finding it difficult because we’re climbing in some pretty challenging weather conditions at the moment, but he’s determined and won’t give up.’

Arthur has spent his spare time climbing several mountains including Whernside, Buckden Pike and Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales and Thorpe Cloud in the Peak District.

Claire said her son also went outside and climbed when Storm Isha hit Britain.

‘I think that was quite a challenge for him and he was talking about the wind and the rain at the top.

‘I think he found it quite frightening. But when he reached the bottom he was very proud of himself for doing it and now he is proud to tell everyone that he climbed that. [during] Storm Isha.’

He has currently reached 2,500 million with around 6,349 million to go and has raised almost £6,000 for charity so far.

Claire says he likes to update his regularly Instagram page on his progress.

Arthur usually walks up mountains with members of his family, but since then he has had peers from his school willing to join him on his journey.

His school also held a fundraising day where students and teachers wore hats and donated to his cause.

Claire and Henry are going on a climb in April with some of Arthur’s teachers and friends.

To donate to Arthur’s page, click here.

By Ali Daher for Daily Mail Australia

Published: 6:09 AM EDT, March 13, 2024 | Updated: 6:50 AM EDT, March 13, 2024