Behind every great man is a great woman, as the saying goes. In the case of Donald Trump, however, the situation is not quite as clear as the aphorism suggests.
On one side of his presidency, of course, was his wife, the beautiful former model Melania, who had a stormy reign as First Lady. (Who can forget her headline-grabbing “I Really Don't Care” coat that she wore while visiting the U.S.-Mexico border?)
On the other side was Trump's daughter Ivanka, the icy blonde who, along with her husband Jared Kushner, became a prominent – and controversial – adviser to her father's administration.
Some said the two women didn't get along. There were reports that Melania called Ivanka “princess” and referred to her and her husband as “snakes” – and that her team even devised a seating plan to ensure Ivanka couldn't be seen by photographers at Trump's inauguration.
Donald could return to the White House later this year – something that seems ever closer after he soundly defeated his opponent Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination in her home state of South Carolina over the weekend. Haley, I vowed last night to keep fighting.
Lara Trump with Donald Trump
Lara in this “cheesy” New Year’s Eve dress with Eric
But if he triumphs, which of Trump's wives will stand victorious at his side?
Melania has signaled she supports her 77-year-old husband's recent bid for the White House, but has only been seen at one event at Mar-a-Lago after an absence to mourn her mother's death.
A source recently told the New York Post's Page Six following the 53-year-old's confident performance at former first lady Rosalynn Carter's funeral: “Melania recognizes that it is time to join the ranks of historic first ladies and to leave her.” Highlight the story. . . “She feels more prepared for her potential role the second time around.”
Ivanka, however, is a different story: Having retired from the political fray, the 42-year-old has instead settled into a new, glittering life as a socialite in Florida and shows no desire to return to Washington.
So who will fill the vacuum left by Ivanka?
Enter Lara Trump, the wife of Trump's second son Eric, who has come into the former president's affections in an unlikely way and is seen as Ivanka's natural successor.
Last week, the feisty, ambitious blonde moved further into the political spotlight after her father-in-law endorsed her as co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC).
“Lara is an extremely talented communicator and committed to MAGA.” [Make America Great Again] stands for,” Trump enthused. “She told me she wanted to take on this challenge and that it would be great!”
The 41-year-old mother of two is certainly no stranger to politics. She worked for her father-in-law's 2016 presidential campaign and led the Trump-Pence Women's Empowerment Tour to try to mobilize female voters after Trump's offensive and sexist comments.
During the Trump administration, she hosted and produced the pro-Trump podcast “Real News Update,” returned as a top adviser to her father-in-law's re-election bid in 2020, and was a Fox News contributor in 2021, but left that role after taking office on father-in-law announced that he would run again.
“Lara will do a lot of what Ivanka brought to the Trump campaign, but there will be some differences,” says Doug Heye, a former RNC spokesman.
“Ivanka would try to put a nicer face on some of Trump's rhetoric, but Lara doesn't.” She hits hard – just like Trump. And that’s one of the reasons she’s in the role she’s playing.”
Lara and her younger brother Kyle were born in 1982 and raised by their parents Robert and Linda Yunaska in an oceanfront home in Wrightsville Beach, an affluent beach community in North Carolina.
Mr. Yunaska owned a yacht building business and the family was staunch Republicans.
Trump with Lara (left), Tiffany and Ivanka at Buckingham Palace
Trump's wife Melania has signaled she supports her 77-year-old husband's latest bid for the White House
After graduating from Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, Lara earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Media from North Carolina State University.
A fitness fanatic, she became a personal trainer and considered a career as a sportscaster before studying pastry arts at the French Culinary Institute in New York.
She briefly started a cake business called Lara Lea Confections, where she made birthday cakes in the shape of Chanel handbags or Christian Louboutin shoes. She reportedly baked a cake depicting an AK-47 rifle for her then-boyfriend Eric's birthday, but has since removed the image of it from the internet.
She met her future husband in 2008 and noticed him across a crowded room because he was taller than her at 5 feet 7 inches.
“I wish it was a nice, silly scenario, but we happened to be traveling in New York at the same time and place,” Lara told her local newspaper. She said she only found out his last name after she went out with friends that night and it took three months for them to arrange a first date.
She claimed she was nervous when she met her future father-in-law at an event at the US Open a few months later, but said Trump calmed her nerves by buying her ice cream.
“It was so normal that it just blew me away,” she told a group of women in 2016, adding that the Trumps were “one of the best families I've ever met in my life.”
However, according to Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer and now a fierce critic of the former president, Trump was not an immediate fan of Lara. “He didn’t want Eric to marry her. “He had found someone else at the Trump Organization that Eric should marry,” Cohen told podcast host Ben Meiselas.
“And of course Donald not only made fun of her looks, but of course he also made fun of her [eldest son] Donald Jr and Ivanka. They all made fun of her appearance. They just didn't like her at all.'
From 2012 to 2016, Lara worked as a story coordinator at the tabloid news show Inside Edition, and after dating for six years, she and Eric finally got engaged.
He proposed in the middle of a field at the 15-bedroom Trump Seven Springs Estate in Bedford, Connecticut, which the Trumps use as a family retreat.
During a walk with the couple's beagle, Charlie, he brought out champagne and made him a platinum and diamond ring from his sister's Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry Collection. He probably got a discount.
On the couple's wedding page, Lara described herself as a “southern girl.” . . breaking news guru and baker extraordinaire,” while Eric joked that he was “born into a relatively unknown New York family.”
The couple married under a canopy of roses and dangling crystals at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2014 in a lavish ceremony attended by 400 guests.
Lara wore two different Vera Wang dresses and the couple cut a six-tier pink wedding cake before heading off on their honeymoon. In 2017, their son Eric – known as Luke – was born and their daughter Carolina was born in 2019.
Lara is already playing a major role in her father-in-law's campaign for the Republican nomination, but political observers were surprised when he nominated her for the RNC.
“This is about Trump using his own people – something every politician loves to do, but Trump drives loyalty to unprecedented levels,” Heye says.
“Lara has become a conservative media figure, and she will be promoting her father-in-law on television and promoting him and candidates on the road.” She's good at that and popular with grassroots Republicans. She’ll get the cheers from the crowd.”
With her perfectly coiffed hair, soft lips, false eyelashes and slim figure in business attire, it's clear that stylish Lara enjoys the political spotlight, cheering on Trump supporters and blowing them kisses after she finishes a speech.
She recently admitted that she says the Pledge of Allegiance, America's patriotic verse, with her children every night.
But she is already a controversial figure. She mocked Joe Biden's stutter in 2020 and railed against migrants crossing the border and “flooding” the American education system with Spanish speakers in 2023. “We speak English here,” she insisted.
She has described herself as a “crazy dog lady” and is a supporter of animal welfare organizations, but has failed to publicly praise her husband Eric for his love of big game hunting.
She angered many Republicans two weeks ago when she revealed that if she were elected to the RNC, “every single penny will go to the most important and only mission of the RNC: to elect Donald Trump as president of the United States and to save it.” 'Country'.
Social media exploded with claims that Lara wanted the RNC to help pay Trump's legal bills and turn him into his “personal slush fund.”
In a sharp retort, Michael Steele, a former RNC chairman, said Lara gave “the wrong answer” and that the RNC's job is to support the entire party and every Republican candidate, not just one.
There were also social blunders. Lara ran into trouble in 2022 when she posted a video of her then five-year-old son driving his toy car during Hurricane Ian in Florida. Although the little boy clearly didn't enjoy the experience, his mother said it was “character building.”
Super-fit Lara, who runs marathons and triathlons, was heavily criticized for wearing a daring, thigh-high slit dress to the 2023 New Year's Eve party at Mar-a-Lago. Some critics said it was “tasteless.”
And last year she was mocked for recording her own, decidedly boring version of the late rock musician Tom Petty's song “I Won't Back Down” and singing it at Mar-a-Lago.
Petty's family had already issued her father-in-law a cease and desist letter for playing the song during a 2020 campaign rally.
“Trump had no authority in any way to use this song to advance a campaign that failed too many Americans and common sense,” the Petty family said in a statement.
Not surprisingly, Jill Hopman, chairwoman of the New Hanover Democratic Party in Lara's home state of North Carolina, is not a fan.
“Nothing seemed to work out for Lara in the past in the sense that she has temporary jobs and jumps from one thing to the next. So maybe this is another temporary job to help her father-in-law,” she says. “But it’s not in the best interest of the country and it’s not in the best interest of the Republican Party.”
“I think the fact that Ivanka and Jared have no interest in joining this campaign or this administration and that Melania has all but disappeared, Lara is there either out of desperation or boredom.
“I’m sure she’s an excellent fundraiser and an excellent surrogate for Donald Trump as an individual, but she doesn’t have the political experience to lead the RNC.”
And what about Lara's relationship with Melania, her husband's stepmother? In a 2018 interview with Elle magazine, which called Lara “one of the most powerful women in America,” Lara said she respected Melania and described her as an “intellectual.”
“It must be really isolating being the first lady and I don't think people ever think about that,” she added.
Asked about Melania's controversial “I really don't care” jacket, Lara shrugged and said, “I never asked her about it.”
Although the women are not close friends, sources say they are warm and friendly with each other, and Melania is happy that Lara can take some of the pressure off her during the campaign.
That's exactly what the celebrity daughter-in-law did last week, leaving husband Eric in charge of their two young children at their £2.5million five-bedroom, seven-bathroom Tuscan-inspired mansion at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter. Florida to stand up for her father-in-law.
Introduced in Beaufort, South Carolina, by Congresswoman Nancy Mace as Trump's “secret weapon,” Lara said in a fiery speech to supporters that the presidential race was a battle “between good and evil.”
She also controversially added that she believes supporters want to help Trump with his bills.
“With Melania and Ivanka out of the public eye, she is the most prominent female face in the Trump campaign,” says Doug Heye. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of Lara in the run-up to the presidential election on November 5th.”