Donald Trump Tried To Give Son Barron A Last-Minute Name Change

Why did Donald Trump say it took "courage" to name his fifth and final child Barron? Picking a baby name can be fun, challenging, confusing, or even downright agonizing, but bravery isn't typically involved. A peek into the controversial politician's personal history gives some insight into what he meant. In 2016, The Washington Post ran an exposé revealing that for years, the then-presidential candidate frequently posed as his own PR agent over the phone, using the pseudonym "John Barron" ("John Miller" was another of his phony spokespeople, FYI). 

This allowed Donald to control his own narrative in the press, to a certain extent, on topics such as his divorce from his first wife, Ivana Trump, without seeming too obvious about it. At the time, Donald denied the strategy, despite having admitted to being his own publicist in a previous court case, per NBC News. Although Donald's youngest child was born in March 2006, a decade before the Post story broke, Trump may have realized it would sound too suspicious to give the baby the same name as his supposed spokesman. 

Melania Trump, however, refused to let him change it. In the Gayle King interview, Donald went on to recall, "She said, 'You can't take it away! I've been calling him Barron since he's been in my stomach. And you just can't take it away.'" The expectant mom's instincts won out, and Barron William was the name the Trumps ultimately put on the birth certificate.