In 1896, a little-known American author named Ingersoll Lockwood published a slim novella about a populist outsider who wins the presidency and sends New York City into chaos. He called it The Last President. One hundred and thirty years later, the internet is convinced he knew something the rest of us didn’t.
The answer, according to the Trump family, is a firm no. “Name me one time traveler,” Lara Trump said flatly when pressed. “They don’t exist.”
As media commentator Brett Cooper pointed out in a recent video, “I don’t even know how you would respond to allegations of your brother-in-law being a time traveler,” she said. “But we do have to admit her saying, ‘name me one time traveler, they don’t exist,’ is pretty funny.”
To understand why this theory has legs, you have to go back to Lockwood himself. An American lawyer, diplomat and author, he also wrote a series of children’s novellas starring a protagonist named Baron Trump: a wealthy young boy who lived in a place called Castle Trump and went on time-traveling adventures with his dog. Cooper lays out the details: “In the eighties, Trump was actually in the casino business, and for a time one of his New Jersey casinos was named Trump Castle.” The fictional Baron’s mentor? A man named Don. His family? Of German descent — just like the modern Trumps.
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And The Last President only deepens the rabbit hole. It describes a shocking election that leaves New York City in chaos, with protestors storming Fifth Avenue — where Trump Tower stands today — “led by anarchists and socialists outraged by the election of a populist president.” The fictional president appoints a man named Pence to his cabinet. And little Baron’s best friend in the original novellas? His name is Elon.
If the books are the foundation of the theory, Nikola Tesla is the mortar holding it together. Two days after Tesla died in a New York hotel in 1943, the FBI called in a man named John G. Trump — Donald Trump’s uncle, an MIT professor and electrical engineer — to examine the inventor’s belongings, including a purported “death ray.”
The story extrapolates from there: Trump’s uncle didn’t find nothing. He found Tesla’s time travel plans. “The alleged conspiracy goes that what actually happened was that Trump’s uncle did find something,” Cooper explains. “He found Tesla’s time travel plans, and now the entire Trump family has access to this kind of technology.”
Cooper is careful to keep one foot on the ground throughout. “Maybe these are just a bunch of very, very odd coincidences,” she says. But she also argues there’s something genuinely worth taking away from all of it — not time travel, but history. Lockwood was writing in 1896, during the Gilded Age, when wealth inequality was staggering, populist outsider William Jennings Bryan was electrifying ordinary Americans, and protests were breaking out across major cities. “That could literally be written right now,” Cooper says of one passage from the book.
“Maybe it’s not a prophecy, maybe it’s just a coincidence — and maybe a lot of history,” Cooper said.
That’s the real thesis buried beneath the tinfoil: America has been here before. The chaos, the division, the sense that everything is about to collapse — it’s not new. Lockwood wrote from fear about what would happen if an outsider got into power. He ended his book with the Capitol being blown up. It wasn’t, in 1896. And in 2026, Cooper finds something hopeful in that. “Our country has been in a predicament like this before, and somehow by the grace of God, we survived,” Cooper said.
Whether Lockwood was a prophet, a time traveler’s accomplice or simply a very observant writer, the eeriness lingers. As Cooper puts it: “Let’s hold onto our hats — because things are brewing.”
To watch Brett Cooper’s full video, click here.
Abby Trivett is a writer and editor for Charisma Media and has a passion for sharing the gospel through the written word. She holds two degrees from Regent University, a B.A. in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and a Master of Arts in Journalism. She is the author of the upcoming book, The Power of Suddenly: Discover How God Can Change Everything in a Moment. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
