Ex-President Donald Trump (left) gave a tribute to his and Melania’s (second from right) son Barron (right) in his Iowa caucuses victory speech (Picture: GC Images)
Former President Donald Trump revealed why he and his wife Melania’s son Barron is so tall, in a jovial victory speech around the first 2024 presidential contest.
Achieving a record-breaking win in the Iowa caucuses, Trump thanked his mother-in-law Amalija Knavs, who died last week, for all she did for the family including 6-foot-7 Barron.
‘Boy, did she take care of Barron,’ Trump said from his campaign headquarters in Des Moines on Monday night.
‘That’s how he got so tall – he only ate her food,’ he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
Trump in his speech celebrating winning the Iowa Republican caucus by 51% of the vote said Knavs was ‘way up there, she’s looking down and she’s so proud of us’.
‘I just want to say, Amalija you are special. You are one of the most special people I’ve ever known,’ Trump said.
‘And that was a tough period of time for the family but she’s amazing, she was amazing. So I just want to thank what she’s done for our family and her husband…
‘Great people, great parents to all of us, really great parents but also to Barron.’
Ex-President Donald Trump (right) said his and Melania’s (second from right) son Barron (second from left) grew so tall because he ate all of his grandmother Amalija Knavs’ (left) food (Picture: Shutterstock)
Trump added of his 17-year-old son: ‘I said you’re gonna be a basketball player. He said, well I like soccer dad, actually. I thought… at you’re height I like basketball better but you can’t talk them into everything.’Â
He also called Barron a ‘special boy,’ according to the Daily Mail, and said he was ‘watching on TV’.
Trump thanked his entire family who he said have ‘worked so hard’ and ‘taken so much abuse for being good people’. He said, drawing cheers, ‘I want to thank my incredible wife, the first lady – I’ll say former and maybe future.’
Barron’s whereabouts have been even more mysterious than his mother’s, as he was in his early teenage years when his father served as president. Melania has long focused on raising and protecting him.
‘Melania is busy with her son and family and she pays only so much attention to these issues which captivate the media,’ a social source told People in August.
But Barron has been making more appearances, including when Trump launched his presidential campaign in November 2022, and in their Christmas family photo at Mar-a-Lago this year which Melania skipped to be at her then-ill mother’s bedside.
Trump has cited Knavs’ death in requests for judges to postpone closing arguments in his $370million civil fraud trial and his defamation trial brought by columnist E Jean Carroll, but was denied.
