The first lady is not kidding around.
Stanford constitutional law professor Pamela S. Karlan went viral during the impeachment hearings on Wednesday for tearing into Republican Rep. Doug Collins, and telling him that she was “insulted” by his suggestion that she hadn’t read the witness transcripts. What’s more, she stated that everything she has read “tells me that when President Trump invited, indeed demanded, foreign involvement in our upcoming election.”
Then she made this play on words:
CORRECTION: ‘While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron’: Prof. Karlan uses the Trump family to outline the Constitution’s rule that there can’t be titles of nobility. (We are deleting an earlier tweet that misspelled Barron Trump’s name.) pic.twitter.com/ZLrxcbxUhk
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 4, 2019
And the Trump campaign is seizing on this particular line, where Karlan used the name of the president’s youngest son to make a point about the limitations of the president’s executive powers.
Her comment got a few laughs at the hearing, but Barron’s mother didn’t find it so funny.
First lady Melania Trump, whose “Be Best” initiative advocates against bullying, tweeted that Karlan “should be ashamed.”
A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.
— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 4, 2019
Other supporters of the president didn’t find it so funny, either. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told Karlan that her “little joke about Barron … makes you look mean” during the hearing.
Karlan apologized for her remark late Wednesday. “It was wrong of me to do that,’’ she said, according to the Associated Press. “I do regret it.”
Trump 2020 national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany released the following statement in response on Wednesday afternoon:
“Only in the minds of crazed liberals is it funny to drag a 13-year-old child into the impeachment nonsense,” she wrote. “Pamela Karlan thought she was being clever and going for laughs, but she instead reinforced for all Americans that Democrats have no boundaries when it comes to their hatred of everything related to President Trump. Hunter Biden is supposedly off-limits according to liberals, but a 13-year-old boy is fair game. Disgusting.”
McEnany added, “Every Democrat in Congress should immediately repudiate Pamela Karlan and call on her to personally apologize to the president and the first lady for mocking their son on national TV.”
Trump supporters like Kellyanne Conway also picked up the Hunter Biden argument.
Hunter Biden is off-limits but Barron Trump is not? https://t.co/k4I8iK7y39
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) December 4, 2019
The Trump family has been fiercely protective of the 13-year-old boy, such as slamming actor Peter Fonda for posting a tweet last year that read, “We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.” Fonda later apologized for the “highly inappropriate and vulgar” tweet. In 2017, “Saturday Night Live” writer Katie Rich was suspended after tweeting that “Barron will be this country’s first homeschool shooter,” when Barron was just 10. She also apologized, and former first daughter Chelsea Clinton, a Democrat, also came to the boy’s defense, writing on Facebook FB, -0.06% that “Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does — to be a kid.”
But many on Twitter TWTR, +0.10% argued that professor Karlan’s wordplay on Wednesday was not in the same league as these previous attacks on the first son.
Folks, if you seriously believe Prof. Pamela Karlan was attacking Barron Trump with that line, you need to take an aspirin and go to sleep for the night. Try again tomorrow.#ImpeachmentHearings
— Charlotte Clymer🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) December 4, 2019
Oh give me a break, people. Karlan wasn't attacking Barron Trump, or making a joke at his expense, or dragging him into politics. The mere mention of his name as a play on words to make a legitimate point is none of those things. You don't have to fall for every bad faith attack.
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) December 4, 2019
House Rs up in arms about the incivility of joking about Barron Trump's name. Meanwhile, President Trump himself, this AM in London https://t.co/NEABWxPuHD pic.twitter.com/HgEQbNUI7b
— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 4, 2019
This report has been updated with Karlan’s apology.