Donald Trump’s granddaughter and teen golf prodigy Kai Trump is on her way to becoming a mainstream MAGA influencer, with the glitzy athlete eager to share with the world her charming anecdotes about what it’s like to hang out with her re-elected “grandpa.”
The 17-year-old daughter of Donald Trump Jr. and his ex-wife Vanessa Trump went viral over the weekend yet again, this time mimicking Trump’s dance moves and golf swing aboard his private jet—portraying the aspirational lifestyle social media users look for in their chosen content, mashed together with a deliberate softening of her president-elect grandfather that fully ignores his infamous habit for profane insults and crude remarks.
Together with a friend in the video, Kai Trump performed some of her grandfather’s frequently meme’d dance moves, set to the Village People’s “YMCA”, offering up a simpler, smiley perspective on Trump, who Kai describes as a “hard worker” for “all Americans” (just not the “bad hombres,” “nasty women,” “dumb women,” or any of other groups of people he’s regularly insulted).
You won’t hear any of those insults on Kai’s accounts. Instead, the millions who follow the young Trump on socials will get what the Daily Mail has called “heartwarming” phone calls between the pair, and inside looks at their very sweet “Sundays” together. In this world, Trump’s main message is not that “America is the garbage can of the world,” but that you should “believe in yourself” even when times are tough. How sweet!
The audio that Kai Trump’s followers get of Donald Trump on her accounts are inspirational tidbits from his speeches, set to slideshows of her with her elderly grandad, both sporting enormous grins. And if that’s all you see of this agreeable, doting grandfather, you’d think he’d never tried to overturn an election.
Her social media content is an extension of what the young Trump added to her grandfather’s campaign at the Republican National Convention last July, when she made her political debut to “show the side of my grandpa that people don’t often see.” Through her social media platforms, she can also show you “incredible” honorary Trump uncle Elon Musk is by fangirl-ing out over a visit to SpaceX.
Her public praise of her grandfather stands in sharp contrast to other, more rebellious Gen Z children of MAGA parents, like Claudia Conway, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway’s daughter, who slammed Trump as “not a real Republican” over the summer—or Ted Cruz’s daughter Caroline, who went viral for dissing Trump on camera earlier this month while her dad gave a victory speech celebrating his and the president-elect’s election wins.
But Kai Trump seems to be playing a different sort of long game. It’s not just Donald Trump that looks great in Kai Trump’s world. The young golfer, as a dedicated athlete, is herself an aspirational figure, whose existence has all the online indicators of a delightfully privileged life—the only true prerequisite for a successful influencer.
If you are one of the many Trump voters who, as his former White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin has put it several times on The View, “doesn’t like his personality or the things he says,” but voted for him anyway—Kai Trump’s socials offer a place of blissful ignorance, where one can pretend, against beautiful, sunny backdrops, that all is right with the world, and maybe Trump just didn’t mean any of those fascist things he said.
