HARRISBURG, Pa. — At first glance, Hunter Turpack is your typical Pennsylvania pre-teen: unkempt brown hair, glasses and an infectious smile that lights up a room.
However, in October 2016, 2 year old Hunter He took the world by storm when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump called him up onstage at a rally in Wilkes-Barre.
Trump, clad in a suit and cradling the toddler – whose blonde hair resembled the future 45th president’s infamous hairstyle – asked the child whether he wanted to go back to his parents or stay with him.
Hunter’s simple response, “Trump,” drew huge applause.
Hunter, now 10 years old and with dark hair, told The Washington Post he remembers that moment very well.
“That was cool. Not every kid gets to do that. [with] “It’s been great to be president,” Hunter said. “I was just lucky to be able to do it.”
On Wednesday, Hunter, wearing a red shirt that read “OG Baby Trump 2016,” made the roughly 90-minute journey from Schuylkill County to Harrisburg with his mother, Jessica Tharpack, and his siblings to attend a Trump rally.
Though he’s still too young, eight years old, to vote, the pre-teen has a good understanding of what’s important for the Republican Party in this year’s election.
Hunter said that despite being six years too young to drive, he wanted to hear the 78-year-old Trump talk about “the election in Texas and gas prices.”
Of course, Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon of high gas prices to try to retake the House in 2022, and they continue to focus on the issue as gas prices soar in key battleground states like Michigan.
And in Texas, where unrest at the border has helped Republicans flip several heavily Hispanic, traditionally Democratic districts during the Biden-Harris administration, voters in the state’s Rio Grande Valley sent conservative lawmakers such as Reps. Monica Delacruz and Tony Gonzales to Congress.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is also seeking reelection in Texas, where polls show him leading Democrat Collin Allred by a sizable margin, but in 2018 he faced a tougher-than-expected fight against progressive Beto O’Rourke, whom he came close to defeating in the 2020 presidential election.
Jessica Tharpack spoke to The Washington Post shortly after her son died and said she and Hunter were not at the rally in western Pennsylvania where Trump was nearly assassinated earlier this month.
“We got 20 calls and messages that day asking if we were there,” Jessica recalled.
“I looked at Hunter and said, ‘Are you not going to any more meetings?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m going.'”
Still, she used the incident as a lesson to her son.
“We talked about what happens at church, at school, at the theater,” Jessica added, saying they both felt safe attending the Trump rally on Wednesday.
“It was a really horrific event. I feel like maybe the security here has changed today.”
Regarding Trump’s chances of reelection, Hunter said he could “definitely beat” Kamala Harris because he’s “better than me.”
Perhaps this is one “hunter” we can all get behind.
