The first time Donald Trump was president, it was decidedly a family affair. His wife Melania and young son Barron joined him in the presidential living quarters. His adult daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner served as top White House advisers. Sons Eric and Donald Jr. looked after the family business, the Trump Organization, which holds real estate across the world. Those properties resulted in the Trumps allegedly racking up thousands of conflicts of interest during his presidency, according to ethics experts.
This time around, things will look a bit different at 1600 Pennsylvania. Barron’s in college in New York. Jared and Ivanka are in Miami, after the latter formally announced her withdrawal from politics in 2022. Melania’s reportedly going to bounce between Palm Beach and Manhattan, rather than live full-time at the White House. Don Jr. got a new job as a venture capitalist instead of joining the White House, and Eric is taking a back seat to his wife, Lara.
There may be fewer Trumps in the White House come January, but the family will still have its fingerprints all over the levers of power, from politics to media to finance.
Lara Trump, who is married to Trump’s third eldest, Eric, is the family member most directly in touch with electoral politics, and it seems her trajectory is only up.
During the 2024 campaign, she served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee. There she alternated between reinforcing her father-in-law’s baseless claims about a fraudulent 2020 election and encouraging the GOP to embrace early voting, part of the party’s broader message attempting to move past Trump’s repeated attacks on the practice.
After helping the Republicans secure the House, the Senate, and the White House and the presidential popular vote, Lara Trump’s stock couldn’t be higher within the GOP. Conservative legislators and media figures have been openly advocating for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to appoint her to replace Senator Marco Rubio, who’s been tapped as the president-elect’s nominee for Secretary of State.
On Wednesday, Lara Trump told Fox News she “would love to serve the people of Florida” if asked.
“No one knows better than I do the America first agenda or the goals of Donald Trump for the coming four years,” she said. “So if I am asked, I would love to consider it, but I have yet to have a conversation with Governor DeSantis.”
If appointed, it would cement the beginning of a true Trump political dynasty in Washington, akin to the Bush and Clinton families.
As Lara has continued her rise through the more traditional parts of the party, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner have climbed the rungs of high finance, which is rarely a step or two outside of politics.
Since 2021, Kushner has presided over Affinity Partners, a $3billion Miami-based private equity firm, whose investors include Taiwanese electronics billionaire Terry Gou and the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
The Senate Finance Committee raised alarms last month the firm had been paid at least $112million in fees but had not returned any profits.
“Affinity’s investors may not be motivated by commercial considerations but rather the opportunity to funnel foreign government money to members of President Trump’s family, namely Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump,” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to the company in September.
Affinity told The New York Times the firm has always complied with federal law and said private equity firms often don’t immediately return profits.
