Recently, as President Donald Trump has implemented aggressive policies targeting prestigious Ivy League universities like Harvard, rumors are spreading that his youngest son, Barron Trump, has applied there but was not accepted.
According to reports from the U.S. New York Post, Economic Times, and other foreign media on the 27th (local time), recent content on social media (SNS) claims that Barron failed to gain admission to the Ivy League (Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell), leading to assertions that Trump is attacking these universities.
Barron enrolled in New York University Stern School of Business last year. This was a different choice from the longstanding tradition of the Trump family attending the University of Pennsylvania or Georgetown University. At the time, Trump noted, "Barron had several options, and he chose New York University because he liked it there."
However, last month, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse raised suspicions on X (formerly Twitter) by asking, "I wonder how many Trumps got rejected by Harvard."
Subsequently, numerous posts claiming that Barron was rejected by prestigious universities like Harvard appeared online, and speculation continued that Trump's recent tough stance toward these universities was due to this.
One netizen said on SNS, "Harvard should publish Barron's application and the SEOHAN ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION letter. Then we will know exactly why Trump is attacking them," while another user claimed, "Guess which universities did not accept Barron Trump: Harvard, Stanford, Columbia—these are all universities Trump is attacking."
In response to the controversy, Melania's Spokesperson Nicholas Clemens said that day, "Barron has never applied to Harvard," and added, "The claim that his representative applied instead is completely false."
Previously, the Trump administration reviewed the suspension of billions of dollars in subsidies allocated to Harvard and increased pressure by threatening to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status.