“This is a terrible decision, and you have Hakeem Jefferies who – he’s a dope – and you have Chuck Schumer, who can’t cook a cheeseburger, of course these people are happy… but true Americans will not be happy,” said a caller who dialed in to C-SPAN on Friday.
He was talking about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that President Donald Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs were illegal, as well as Democratic Minority Leader of the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Though the caller identified themselves as Republican man “John Barron” from Virginia, he sounded very familiar to many.
On social media, people quickly noted that this caller sounded a lot like… the president himself.
“Barron” also had a take on the tariff decision that aligned with the president’s, per several Truth Social posts from the commander-in-chief. According to a 2016 article in The Washington Post, Trump used to have a spokesperson named John Barron “who was actually Donald Trump himself.”
In 2006, Trump and now First Lady Melania Trump named their son Barron. He’s now 19 and a student at New York University. People magazine reported last year that Barron Trump had transferred to the school’s Washington, D.C. campus after studying in New York for his freshman year.
After speculation about the true identity of the “John Barron” caller heated up, C-SPAN eventually joined the conversation Sunday. It refuted the notion that the caller might have been the president.
“Because so many of you are talking about Friday’s C-SPAN caller who identified himself as “John Barron,’ we want to put this to rest: it was not the president,” said an X post from the public affairs network. “The call came from a central Virginia phone number and came while the president was in a widely covered, in-person White-House meeting with the governors.”
It then urged the public to tune in to coverage of the State of the Union Address scheduled Tuesday.