A C-SPAN caller who vehemently ripped into the Supreme Court’s ruling against President Donald Trump’s tariffs sparked an internet frenzy for sounding strikingly familiar.
A man identifying himself as “John Barron”—the alias Trump used with journalists in the ’80s and ’90s to plant stories—raged on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Friday morning over what he called the “worst decision you ever have in your life” before eventually being cut off.
The caller’s voice has convinced many online that it was the 79-year-old president himself.
“This is John Barron, and you have, look, you have, this is the worst decision you ever have in your life, practically,” the person, who identified themselves as Barron, a Republican from Virginia, said.
He continued, “But this is a terrible decision. And you have Hakeem Jeffries, who, he’s a dope, and you have Chuck Schumer, who can’t cook a cheeseburger.”
Barron’s rant continued until he was cut off. “Of course, these people are happy. Of course, these people are happy, but true Americans will not be happy. And you have the woman earlier. I assume she’s a woman, she’s a Democrat, but she said she’s just, she’s disgraced, she’s devastated.”
“All right, John,” C-SPAN host Greta Brawner said after about 30 seconds.
The clip quickly went viral, with many of Trump’s critics convinced it was the president phoning in.
The speculation grew so intense by Sunday afternoon that C-SPAN stepped in to declare, “it was not the president.”
“The call came from a central Virginia phone number and came while the president was in a widely covered, in-person White-House [sic] meeting with the governors,” C-SPAN wrote on X.
“This is not fake, people. It’s just pathetic,” one X user titled Rogue POTUS Staffer shared in a post viewed nearly a million times.
“Trump has lost his d**n mind,” another replied.
Others are certain that it was a Trump impersonator.
“I don’t think the guy calling in to C-SPAN is actually Trump,” Democratic strategist Mike Nellis wrote on X. “But what does it say about the president that none of us would even blink if he did something this stupid?”
For years, it was reportedly an open secret among New York reporters that the then–real estate mogul would phone magazines using the name Barron—something he later denied during his first presidential campaign. It wasn’t his only alias.
Famously, a journalist at People Magazine received a call from “John Miller”—another rumored Trump alias—in 1991 and got a detailed explanation of why Trump dumped model Marla Maples for Italian model Carla Bruni.
“He’s coming out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially,” a man claiming to be publicist John Miller once said, according to The Washington Post.
When the journalist asked “Miller” how important Bruni was in Trump’s love life, the spokesman said, “I think it’s somebody that—you know, she’s beautiful. I saw her once, quickly, and beautiful . . . ” and then reverted to referring to Trump in the third person, according to the Post.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
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