Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton defended 11-year-old Barron Trump after Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller ran an article headlined, “It’s High Time Barron Trump Starts Dressing Like He’s In the White House.”
“It’s high time the media & everyone leave Barron Trump alone & let him have the private childhood he deserves,” Clinton tweeted Monday afternoon.
It's high time the media & everyone leave Barron Trump alone & let him have the private childhood he deserves https://t.co/Wxq51TvgDX
— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) August 21, 2017
The Caller story criticized the youngest son of President Donald Trump, and his only child with first lady Melania Trump, for wearing a J. Crew graphic tee, khaki shorts and loafers while exiting Air Force One on Sunday.
“Time and time again Barron has proved that he’s just a normal 11-year-old kid, despite the fact that his dad is the President of the United States and he lives in the White House,” the article says. “One thing that isn’t normal though is the way he dresses when he joins his parents for a public appearance.”
Carlson often defends his more outrageous statements as jokes, and the article often seems intended as satire, as when it says Barron should dress up more for public appearances since he doesn’t have any responsibilities as the president’s youngest child.
Clinton was 12 years old when her father Bill Clinton was sworn in as president in 1993. She quickly became the subject of media attention, and was, like Barron, scrutinized for her appearance. She was perhaps most famously mocked by Rush Limbaugh, who mockingly likened her to a dog.
“Saturday Night Live,” executive producer Lorne Michaels and then-cast member Mike Meyers both issued apologies after a sketch made fun of her.
Then-president Bill Clinton said it was “pretty insensitive to make fun of an adolescent child” in an interview with People after the SNL sketch.
“We really work hard on making sure that Chelsea doesn’t let other people define her sense of her own self-worth. I think the world would be a lot better off if more people were to define themselves in terms of their own standards and values and not what other people said or thought about them,” the 42nd president said. “It’s tough when you are an adolescent because peer opinion and other people’s opinion become more important. But I think she’ll be okay.”
Chelsea Clinton did seem to turn out okay. Besides sticking up for Barron, she is the mother of two, recently wrote a book and is currently serving on Expedia’s board of directors.
This isn’t the first time Clinton has defended Barron Trump. She took to Facebook in January to call out people mocking the then-10-year-old after an SNL writer tweeted that he looked like the country’s first “homeschool shooter.”
“Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does — to be a kid,” she said. “Standing up for every kid also means opposing POTUS policies that hurt kids.”