Research/Study
Lara Trump is now co-chair of the RNC. Here are some of the conspiracy theories and bigotry she's spread.
On her podcast, Trump pushed conspiracy theories about and attacked the 2020 election, COVID-19, migrants, and other marginalized communities
Written by Jack Winstanley, Noah Dowe & Chloe Simon
Research contributions from Carly Evans
Published
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Lara Trump, after receiving an endorsement from former president and her father-in-law Donald Trump, became co-chair of the Republican National Convention in early March, and since then, the committee has restructured and laid off 60 people to give the Trump campaign its full material support. In the last few years, Lara Trump has used her podcast The Right View and various right-wing media appearances to propagate a wide range of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and COVID-19. She has also pushed bigoted rhetoric about trans people and migrants, as well as other marginalized communities.
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Lara Trump has been named co-chair of the Republican National Committee and is preparing to give the Trump campaign the party’s full material support
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- The Republican National Committee selected two Trump-endorsed figures to lead the party: his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and North Carolina GOP leader Michael Whatley. Prior to being elected to the position, Lara Trump had stated that “every penny” of the RNC’s funds would go to the Trump 2024 presidential campaign. [The New York Times, 3/8/24; Bloomberg, 2/21/24]
- Previously, Lara Trump had been a Fox News contributor, and she currently hosts her own podcast, The Right View. Trump had also hosted a weekly video series for her father-in-law’s 2016 presidential campaign, where she praised his accomplishments and qualifications. [Los Angeles Times, 12/3/22; Business Wire, 1/8/24; BuzzFeed News, 8/1/17]
- Since electing new leadership, the RNC has cut 60 staff positions and ended a minority voter outreach program, and it is expected to cut vendor contracts in an effort to free up resources for the Trump campaign. Two lawyers with a history of pushing unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen -- Christina Bobb and Charlie Spies -- have also joined the RNC as legal counsel. [Politico, 3/11/24; Daily Beast, 3/13/24, 2/15/24; NBC News, 3/13/24]
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Lara Trump repeatedly spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, claiming mail-in ballots resulted in “widespread fraud,” and argued that Democrats “knew they were going to rig this whole election”
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- On The Right View, Lara Trump claimed that Biden’s COVID-era campaign strategy of prioritizing virtual events in lieu of risky in-person events was because he “knew then the fix was in.” “They knew they were going to rig this whole election,” she added. “They knew from day one.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 12/18/20; ABC News, 10/7/22]
- Trump in December 2020: “We all believe that Donald Trump won this election. We are going to prove that.” “The most important date coming up really is January 6,” Trump added later in the episode of her streaming show. “We know that there are going to be people that stand up and very proudly say, ‘We don't believe Joe Biden won this election because neither do any of us and neither do you at home.’” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 12/24/20, 12/24/20]
- In December 2020, Trump floated a conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had updated its voting machines “just hours before this election” which may have altered its results. Trump was apparently referencing an instance in which a county election official in Georgia initially attributed a last-minute update to the electronic poll books on its Dominion machines to an Election Day glitch. Politico wrote: “State election officials and Dominion acknowledge that there was a problem with the poll books but have been adamant that no such last-minute update occurred and that no change was made to the pollbooks after Oct. 31.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 12/10/20; Politico, 11/4/20]
- Trump claimed “The Democrats have been trying to thwart … our voting system for a long time,” asking her audience, “Did you feel at home like the last election maybe wasn’t right? Did it feel off to you?” According to Trump: “The Democrats have been trying, guys, for a long time to thwart, so to speak, our voting system. Did you feel at home like the last election maybe wasn't right? Did it feel a little off to you? Do you not still — are you sure that Joe Biden got 81 million votes? Because a lot of people aren't.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 2/25/21]
- During an interview with The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway, Trump promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that Democratic operatives smuggled “ballots in suitcases” in Fulton County, Georgia. “You guys go into ballots inside of suitcases — how legal that is? Is that a standard practice? Because people saw that and they said, ‘That looks a little suspicious.’” Trump asked. “So many people don't have confidence in elections anymore. And they say, ‘Well, gosh, maybe I shouldn't even bother going out to vote because it's going to be rigged anyway.’” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 10/21/21; Media Matters, 12/4/20]
- Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots — which she said were “rife with voter fraud” — had been sent “not just to humans, but to cats as well.” Trump was referring to reporting on a Georgia household which mistakenly received a voter registration application — not a ballot — for their deceased cat in 2020. [Team Trump Online, 8/4/20; The Associated Press, 7/11/20]
- Trump called universal mail-in voting a “total scam” and “a way to defraud the American people.” During an interview with conservative media personality Gina Loudon, Trump suggested universal vote-by-mail “has been proven to cause all sorts of fraud.” For her part, Loudon argued that “we’ve seen whole elections overturned because of this mail-out voter fraud,” arguing that mail-in ballots “tied to a dog, a bunch of dead people, addresses that don’t exist, names that don’t exist” had absolutely “changed elections.” [Real News Update, 8/11/20]
- Trump claimed that mail-in ballots caused “widespread fraud” in 2020. “It was allowed 90 days before a presidential election to change the way in many states we vote to do this universal vote-by-mail,” Trump said. “We're seeing the ramifications of it, and we've seen widespread fraud. We have affidavits signed by thousands, not hundreds, thousands of people out there that basically say, ‘we were witness to voter fraud,’ ‘we saw ballot tampering,’ ‘we ourselves, you know, had it happen to us.’” [Newsmax, Saturday Report, 12/12/20]
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Lara Trump undermined COVID-19 mask mandates and promoted taking hydroxychloroquine as a cure
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- On Fox, Trump described living with COVID-19 public health guidelines as being under “totalitarian rule in so many aspects of our lives.” Trump also falsely claimed there was “virtually no difference in COVID transmissions” between schools in which children wore masks and those that did not, declaring, “Get the masks off our kids.” The New York Times reported that removing mask mandates in school “was associated with an additional 44.9 Covid cases per 1,000 students and staff members.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends First, 2/18/22; The New York Times, 11/10/22]
- Trump defended her father-in-law’s use of hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19, arguing that the drug has “been taken worldwide without issues” and said that she once took it during a family trip to Ecuador to prevent malaria. “What does everybody think about the fact that we found out that President Trump has now been taking it [hydroxychloroquine]?” Trump added, “The drug experts say it [hydroxychloroquine] is not only an ineffective treatment” for COVID-19, but is also associated with “serious heart problems” in some cases. “How dumb does every member of the media probably look right now?” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 5/20/20; Mayo Clinic, accessed 3/13/24]
- Discussing former President Trump’s use of hydroxychloroquine with Fox host Sean Hannity, Trump said “we all know that Donald Trump, anything he does is demonized, even if it is so helpful it would save lives. [Fox News, Hannity, 6/3/21; CBS News, 5/19/20]
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Lara Trump has attacked trans people and spread conspiracy theories about litter boxes in classrooms
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- Trump echoed guest Liz Wheeler’s characterization of gender-affirming surgery as “mutilating your body,” and described the medical community as “sick” for authorizing such care.“Mutilating your body, having your breasts cut off, having your genitals mutilated in some way, that now falls under the care guidelines of this sort of disorder,” Trump said. “And that's really kind of sick on behalf of the medical community.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 6/27/23]
- Trump argued that “identifying as an alien is not that much different than identifying as a different gender.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 3/22/23]
- Trump repeated long-debunked claims that schools are accommodating children who identify as cats, asking, “What do you say to kids who have children in their classroom identifying as furries who need a litter box in the corner of the room?” “And I wish that was a joke, but this is reality right now in so many schools in America, and it's not just in the Democrat-run cities and states,” Trump continued. “Social media is showing this to everyone.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 5/30/23; NBC News, 10/14/22]
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Echoing “great replacement” conspiracy theory rhetoric, Lara Trump baselessly accused Democrats of bringing migrants into the U.S. to sway elections
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- During an interview with former Rep. Vernon Jones (R-GA), Trump stated that the Democrats think they will “just automatically — they think — get the vote of illegal immigrants.” Trump also claimed that Democrats see the tens of millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. and think “those people will be voting Democrat.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 3/9/21]
- Trump on Democrats’ border policies: “I guess the goal, keeping the border open, has been, 'Let’s get all the voters in.'” She continued, “So I guess the goal was just like, open the border, let all these people in, we’ll do away with voter ID laws, and we’ll just hope these people vote Democrat in perpetuity.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 10/17/23]
- Trump speculated that policies promoting voting access were “planned” to coincide with mass migration into the US. Trump speculated that “maybe part of their [the Democrats’] plan is, I don't know, to get millions of illegal immigrants in America that have the opportunity to just go vote because you're not checking to see if the person is who they say they are, if they’re an American citizen — like nothing.” She continued, “It does seem suspicious — all the timing and all of it — almost like maybe it was planned.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 4/8/21]
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Lara Trump has repeated several other extreme talking points, including an antisemitic conspiracy theory about George Soros and attacks on people who have expressed solidarity with Palestinians
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- Trump referred to abortion as “murder” on The Right View. During a Fox News appearance,Trump claimed that reproductive rights advocates want “you to have an abortion, as opposed to giving you the choice to choose whatever you want.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 7/30/20; Fox News, The Big Sunday Show, 6/26/22, via Twitter/X]
- Echoing Christian Nationalist rhetoric, Trump called the criminal indictments against her father-in-law “spiritual warfare” during an appearance on Hannity. “This is not just about Republican versus Democrat,” she claimed. “This is about good versus evil.” [Fox News, Hannity, 3/31/23]
- On The Right View, Trump argued that financier George Soros seems to be to blame “any time there’s anything,” and claimed that he is “hell bent” on “destroying not just America, but the entire world.” She said, “It’s kind of shocking to me, we go back to, I feel like, the same guy every single time. Anytime there’s anything — Black Lives Matter protests, 2020 election, you know, kind of nefarious things going on. Here we are back again at George Soros.” As the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, the right’s deeply antisemitic rhetoric about Soros being an all powerful liberal boogeyman is meant to conjure “the notion that shadowy forces, dark money and disloyal individuals seek to overturn and upend American society.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 10/31/23; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/8/23]
- Trump argued that a female progressive group of lawmakers known as “the Squad” “hate Israel” and “have shown their antisemitism at every turn.” Trump claimed, “They have shown their antisemitism at every single turn, and it's horrible to see.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/23/21]
- Trump claimed that pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses “have no idea what they’re talking about” and argued that the Israel-Hamas war is “about murdering Jewish people.” “A lot of people -- at least I think a lot of these college students who have been out there carrying around Palestinian flags — again who have no idea what they’re talking about — are of the assumption that somehow the Palestinians are just trying to get some land back and are fighting for their right to be there,” she said. Trump added, “That is not what’s going on. Very clearly this is about murdering Jewish people.” [Right Side Broadcasting Network, The Right View, 10/17/23]
Data contributions from Jasmine Geonzon, Pete Tsipis, Gideon Taaffe, Natalie Mathes, Camden Carter, Sophie Lawton, Jacina Hollins-Borges, Ethan Collier, Charis Hoard, and Beatrice Mount.