Any doubts about Lara Trump’s ability to serve as co-chair of the Republican National Committee may now be cast aside after Donald Trump and the GOP saw success in elections across the country.
Lara Trump, who is married to the president-elect’s third child, Eric Trump, was appointed to a leadership position within the RNC in March, in no small part due to the endorsement from her father-in-law.
The former Fox News contributor’s appointment was met with some concerns from Republican figures as another example of Trump tightening his grip on the GOP and reshaping it in his image.
Following Trump’s crushing election victory, as well as the GOP regaining control of the Senate and confident it will hold on to the House, Lara Trump’s role in the Republican Party’s success this year has been praised. The last time Republicans held a trifecta of power was in 2017 and 2018 during Trump’s first term in office.
T.J. McCormack, a Republican communications specialist, said Lara Trump might be the most “underrated political success story” of the past few years.
“The job of the RNC leadership is to recruit the best and brightest candidates, support and shepherd their campaigns and—drumroll—win the presidency and both houses of Congress,” McCormack told Newsweek. “So, on a pragmatic, definitive basis alone, Lara Trump has done her job with flying colors. Any remaining critics of Lara Trump as co-chair of the RNC will likely be professional contrarians or shrill never-Trumpers.”
Newsweek has contacted the RNC for comment via email.
Lara Trump’s role as co-chair of the RNC has been praised following Donald Trump’s election win.
Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty Images
Marc Racicot, a former RNC chair who served as Montana’s governor for eight years, had raised concerns about Lara Trump essentially being handed a prominent role in the RNC by her father-in-law.
“It kind of suggests an expectation of complete, unabashed, and perhaps blind loyalty to the candidate,” Racicot told The Associated Press in May.
Rob Stutzman, a former deputy chief of staff to former California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, told Time in a July profile of Lara Trump: “I think it’s incredibly disserving that the Trump campaign is remaking the RNC into a family office. It’s not normal. It’s not healthy.”
One of the main successes of Lara Trump’s tenure is the sharp increase in fundraising she has overseen.
The RNC doubled its monthly fundraising soon after Lara Trump came on board in March, a month before Trump was set to stand trial for falsifying business records. Trump would later be found guilty of 34 felony counts in his hush money trial.
Trump and the RNC said they brought in $141 million in May, the month the former president was convicted by a jury. This figure was the same amount that President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party raised in March and April combined.
Michele Merrell, a Republican state committeewoman for Broward County in Florida, told the BBC in July that Lara Trump’s appointment to the RNC had made a “world of difference” in terms of donations.
“The fundraising is going through the roof… we were not doing very well before in that. The change in leadership has made all the difference,” she said. “It’s reignited the party, it really has.”
Lara Trump is also said to have played a major role in convincing her father-in-law to end his vendetta against mail-in voting this election, having spent years falsely suggesting they fraudulently cost him the 2020 election, unnamed sources told Time.
“Republicans must win and we will use every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats because they are destroying our country,” Trump said in a press release in June. “Whether you vote absentee, by mail, early in-person or on election day, we are going to protect the vote. We make sure your ballot is secure and your voice is heard.”
In the final stages of the campaign, Lara and Donald Trump appeared together on virtual town halls and robocalls to encourage people to cast their ballots early this year, reported CNN.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, after Trump was declared the election winner, Lara Trump said it had been the “honor of a lifetime” to be the co-chair of the RNC.
“Chairman Michael Whatley & I massively streamlined the organization, set fundraising records, and achieved our only two objectives: 1. Get out the vote (which we did in record numbers) & 2. Protect the ballot—with our election integrity operation of 230,000 poll observers & workers and 3,500 attorneys,” she wrote.
“Congratulations to our entire organization on this incredible victory and especially to Donald Trump.”
