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“Welcome to the family, Lara.”
That’s how a Fox News host greeted Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump, upon the announcement Monday that she would be joining the network as a paid contributor.
Lara Trump, the wife of former presidential son Eric Trump, is already a bosom member of the family that matters most in Republican politics.
But now the 38-year-old former TV producer has left her perch as senior adviser to the Trump campaign to sign on for a regular gig sharing her opinions and analysis in front of the cameras on Fox News.
“I’m so excited first of all to be joining the Fox family,” she said in an appearance on the Fox & Friends morning program Monday.
“I sort of feel like I’ve been an unofficial member of the team for so long, you guys know, it was kind of a joke, over the past five years I would come there so often that the security guards were like, ‘Maybe we should just give you a key’. So to be part of the team I’m so, so excited.”
But Lara Trump’s elevation as a Fox News contributor was worthy of celebration in the kingdom of Rupert Murdoch not only for the truce it could signal between the network and Donald Trump, who turned bitterly against Fox News after the election.
Lara Trump’s arrival as a news commentator could pave the way to a political career of her own that has for months circulated as a pleasing rumor in conservative circles.
The former first daughter-in-law has been mooted as a potential Republican candidate for the US Senate seat in North Carolina to be vacated next year by retiring Republican Richard Burr.
Born Lara Yunaska, Trump, 38, grew up in North Carolina and graduated college from North Carolina State University.
Her viability as a potential political candidate is an open question, one sure to have strategists and donors scrutinizing her air time on Fox News.
But she will also be watched for signs that relations between the network and the former president have warmed since last November, when Donald Trump grew impatient with Fox News for being slow to trumpet his lies about election fraud.
“Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there,” Trump tweeted of Fox News on 12 November – after the election but before his account was suspended. “They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was @FoxNews!”
The contract between Lara Trump and Fox means that both partners of Trump’s two eldest sons were once or current Murdoch employees. Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle was a Fox News presenter for more than a decade.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
