YouTuber Brandon Herrera once mocked Barron Trump and predicted Donald Trump would lose the 2024 election.
But on Wednesday, the president sang Herrera’s praises while throwing his support behind the 30-year-old Texan’s congressional bid.
The full-throttled endorsement comes just weeks after Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter telling Herrera to stop using his image and likeness in his campaign.
But with Rep. Tony Gonzales, the scandal-rocked GOP candidate whom Trump had initially backed, dropping his reelection bid, the president has now pivoted to rallying behind Gonzales’s one-time challenger.
“Brandon Herrera has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Representative from Texas’ 23rd Congressional District — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Trump, 79, wrote on Truth Social.
The thin-skinned president appears to have brushed aside Herrera’s past comments on a February 2024 episode of his podcast, where Herrera joined his co-hosts in ridiculing Barron, then 17.
One of the co-hosts referred to Barron as being a “long ventriloquist-like dummy,” while another said the president’s son “looks like a bully.”
Herrera noted that Barron is “like nine feet tall” and that he is “starting to become a meme,” before making a mocking voice imitating Barron.
“Daddy is coming, Daddy is angry,” Herrera said in his mock voice.
On another podcast in August 2023, Herrera questioned whether Trump could become president again, saying, “I just don’t know if he can carry the actual election.”
The gun rights “absolutist” added that he “really enjoyed Trump’s presidency” but that the former president “messed up a lot of stuff as far as like guns and things.”
As early as January of this year, Trump was trying to avoid being associated with Herrera, with the president’s lawyers sending a letter to Herrera accusing him of sending a mailer with Trump’s image in a “deceptive manner.”
“The mailer described above is inconsistent with President Trump’s unequivocal endorsement of Congressman Gonzalez [sic], and it is likely to confuse voters with respect to President Trump’s preferred candidate in the primary election,” the letter said, according to The Texas Tribune. “In short, the Committee’s mailer uses President Trump’s image and likeness in a deceptive manner that is contrary to President Trump’s stated position regarding the primary election.”
But all of that seems to be water under the bridge. Trump declared in his Truth Social post that Herrera “will work tirelessly to advance our MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN Agenda” and called him an “America First Patriot.”
Democrats have celebrated the prospect of their candidate Katy Padilla Stout running against Herrera in the competitive border district in November.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Herrera’s campaign for comment.
