MS Now host Lawrence O’Donnell tore into the president’s youngest son as part of a longer rant about the Trump family’s aversion to military service.
“After Barron Trump celebrated his 20th birthday in lavish style last week as a Trump, he could have marched straight down to a recruiting station and join the army to fight in his father’s war,” O’Donnell said on his show The Last Word on Wednesday night. “But he didn’t.”
There has been a growing movement demanding that Barron Trump, 20, be drafted into his father’s war in Iran, as the parody website draftbarrontrump.com has gotten attention in the weeks since President Donald Trump launched his unauthorized war against Iran on Feb. 28.
O’Donnell compared then-Princess Elizabeth of England enlisting during World War II to that of Barron, a sophomore at New York University’s Washington, D.C. campus, where his mother, Melania Trump, has said she keeps an eye on him.
“Before she became Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth served in uniform during World War Two while her father was king of England,” he said.
“Does Barron Trump know how to drive? Could he drive an ambulance in the army, or is he not quite as tough as the 18-year-old Princess Elizabeth was when she joined the war effort?” he said. “Imagine being more spoiled than an English princess on her way to becoming queen of England.”
He added that Barron is “more spoiled than the British royal family.”
O’Donnell also criticized the president, who famously avoided the draft five times—including once for bone spurs—and his other children for having no military experience despite Trump’s increasing appetite for conflict.
“Eric and his older brother, Donald Jr., were of military enlistment age when their hometown was attacked on 9/11,” O’Donnell said. “Thousands of young American men and women on that day decided to join the United States military, but not the Trumps.”
“As the wars of their era began in Afghanistan and Iraq, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump followed in the family tradition of silently watching others go off to war,” he noted.
He also singled out Eric Trump, 42, after the U.S. military raised the enlistment age to 42.
“Eric Trump has been left with a wide open opportunity to become the brave Trump, the first and only brave Trump in history,” O’Donnell said.
“And so tonight, with the three Trumps available for military service in their father’s war, Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump, and Barron Trump, the world waits for the emergence of the first brave Trump,” he added.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
The longtime MS Now host then took his criticism right to the top.
“Donald Trump himself, of course, repeatedly and famously avoided the military draft during the Vietnam War, ultimately getting out of it with a note from his doctor saying that his feet—that he spent the rest of his life playing golf on—just could not serve in any capacity in the army,” he said. “Not as a driver, not an office job. Just nothing.”
