Barron Trump, former president Donald Trump’s 18-year-old son, is turning down the chance to serve as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, according to his mother’s office, which said he has “prior commitments.”
The Florida GOP on Wednesday named Barron Trump as one of the state’s at-large delegates to the national convention in mid-July in Milwaukee. The selection was seen as a rare step into the political spotlight by Trump’s youngest son, a high school senior who is set to graduate next week.
But in a statement Friday, the office of former first lady Melania Trump said her son would be passing on the opportunity.
“While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments,” the statement said.
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The statement was first reported by DailyMail.com.
Barron Trump, who was 10 years old when his father was elected president, has kept a much lower profile than others in the Trump clan. The Florida delegate list includes several other Trump family members, including Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s elder sons. One of Trump’s daughters, Tiffany, is also on the list, while his elder daughter, Ivanka, is not.
Donald Trump told a Florida TV station this week that Barron Trump’s selection to be a delegate was “great” and “very interesting.”
“To me, that’s very cute, because he’s a very young guy, and he’s graduating from high school this year,” Trump said. “He’s a very good student, very smart.”
In a Philadelphia radio interview Friday, Donald Trump said Barron Trump “does like politics” and sometimes gives his father advice.
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Barron Trump has come up briefly at his father’s ongoing hush money trial in New York. Donald Trump got permission from the judge to attend his son’s graduation from Oxbridge Academy, a private high school in Florida, set for May 17.
The school is near Donald Trump’s estate at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, where Trump has been residing since he left the White House in 2021.
Barron Trump was among 41 at-large delegates named by the Republican Party of Florida to formally select their party’s presidential nominee at the Milwaukee convention. The state party also selected alternate delegates, though it was not immediately clear who would replace Barron.
The Florida GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump easily won the Florida primary in March, which came after he had already emerged as the presumptive nominee. He carried the onetime battleground state in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections, though President Biden’s reelection campaign is making an effort to win it back this fall.
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