Kai Trump: Donald Trump’s granddaughter wins the Tiktok generation for grandpa

This article originally appeared in November 2024.

Tiktok is full of dance videos. Seen this way, it wasn’t a special clip that the user “thekaitrumpgolfer” posted. Together with a friend, she loosely moves her hips and arms to the song “YMCA”, and the two young women incorporate a golf movement into their performance.

However, two things are remarkable about this: The young dancer in the video is Kai Trump, who doesn’t have this last name by chance – she is Donald Trump’s granddaughter. And with her moves she imitates her grandfather. The Village People’s celebration classic was something like Trump’s unofficial anthem during the election campaign; the 78-year-old became an Internet meme with his slightly awkward movements. “I learned these moves from the best,” Kai Trump writes about her video.

Kai Trump is the eldest daughter of Trump’s eldest son Donald Jr. and his ex-wife Vanessa Haydon. She is currently going to school in Florida and is aiming for a golf career. The 17-year-old has been posting on TikTok at irregular intervals since the summer. 1.5 million people now follow her there and her videos are viewed up to 20 million times.

In some of them she shows her daily routine or films herself playing golf, a passion she shares with her grandfather. In others, however, she presents herself with the president who was elected for the second time in November.

The Republican is known for riots, aggressive speeches and accusations against competitors that are often not even true. No one in the United States is as polarizing as Trump. His granddaughter is a counterpoint: she seems likeable, approachable and down-to-earth. Kulturkampf, as her Tiktok appearance suggests, is not her thing.

Kai Trump presents her grandfather as a nice, harmless grandfather. Someone who dances awkwardly, goes golfing with her, someone she looks up to at 17 years old. That’s exactly what Kai Trump expressed when she first came into the spotlight at the Republican nomination convention in Milwaukee in July. Their appearance was precisely orchestrated, as was that of their father – they were intended to portray Donald Trump as a reliable and loving family man who can also take on the most powerful office in the world for a second time.

She wanted to “show a side of my grandfather that people don’t see so often,” explained Kai Trump in her speech, and described Donald Trump as a “normal grandpa.” Your posts on Tiktok hit the same tone. This makes it an important piece of the puzzle in the Trump clan’s public relations strategy.

Donald Trump, like no other before him, has understood how to exploit social media for his political and social purposes – but the old and new president prefers to send his tirades via X, the network of his supporter Elon Musk, or the Truth Social platform, which belongs to his own company. Tiktok also plays Trump, but much more irregularly. There wasn’t even a post about the election victory there.

Kai Trump fills this gap, which is likely to be much better received by the young audience on Tiktok than a 78-year-old politician. She is not concerned with explicitly political issues, but rather with improving her grandfather’s image. Donald Trump was able to win significantly more votes from young voters in the most recent election than in his first victory in 2016. However, many young people are more liberal and have an aversion to Trump.

Trump cannot be elected US President a third time – and in the last election many Tiktok users were not even eligible to vote. But Trump and his family are probably concerned about much more: the continuation of a worldview, a certain form of society. Donald Trump Jr., Kai Trump’s father, is already playing an important role in the background. And it wouldn’t be surprising if, in the long term, the 17-year-old uses her Tiktok presence as a first small step towards her own political career.