“Welcome to the family, Lara.” That is how a Fox News host greeted Lara Trump, US president Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, upon the announcement on Monday that she would be joining the network as a paid contributor.
Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, is already a bosom member of the family that matters most in Republican politics.
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.
“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,” she said.
Yet Lara Trump’s elevation as a Fox News contributor is worthy of celebration in the kingdom of media mogul 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.
Her 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 US Senator Richard Burr.
Born Lara Yunaska, the 38-year-old grew up in North Carolina and graduated 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 airtime on Fox News.
Yet she is also likely to be watched for signs that relations between the network and the former president have warmed since November last year, when Donald Trump grew impatient with Fox News for being slow to trumpet his lies about election fraud.
The contract between Lara Trump and Fox means that both partners of Donald 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.
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