Love them or hate them, the Trumps will remain a major force in politics — regardless of who’s inaugurated president on January 20, 2021. On this episode, Gianno explains why before interviewing President Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump in a can’t-miss conversation. They discuss the results of the 2020 election, the president’s mindset, and Lara’s prospective run for U.S. Senate in 2022, among many other topics.
Transcript:
Gianno: More than 70 million votes for President Trump this past election. This was the most any sitting president in history has received. It’s clear his message resonated with countless voters. His message also resonated with a group that many Republicans write off and say is a lost cause, that’s African Americans. In 2016, the president said to African Americans, “What do you have to lose?” and interestingly enough, I’d like to switch that around and say what do you have to gain? I look at the policies, the opportunity zones, funding for historically black colleges and universities, among other policies as well. This won the hearts and minds of about eight percent of black voters in 2016, twelve percent of black men. This year, however, was a different story. They saw the policies actually resonate, which I encourage every Republican to up policies if you want this kind of support. We saw in 2020, twelve percent of African Americans vote for Donald Trump, nineteen percent of black men and nine percent of black women, which in 2016 was four percent of black women supporting him. In addition, the president also increased his standing with Latino Americans. According to Edison Research, he captured the support of 36 percent of Latino men and 32 percent of Latino women. These votes helped Trump secure victories in Texas and in Florida. That’s an incredible feat. It’s an especially incredible feat when you think about some of the things people have said on the left about President Trump. I think of a prominent Congressman from New York City by the name of Hakeem Jeffries who said President Trump was the “grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” indicating that he was the chief Klansman of the White House, which is insanely ridiculous. Or someone like Congresswoman Maxine Waters who said right before the election she will “never forgive them for undermining the possibility for helping their own people in their own community.” She said that about young, black men choosing Trump. “It’s absolutely unconscionable,” she said. “It’s shameful.” But despite these comments, Trump won more nonwhite voters since the 1960s.
Gianno: Like Trump or hate him, he has expanded the Republican tent for the better. In addition, he brought in working class and middle-class voters Democrats for decades had usually won. I don’t always agree with President Trump’s message, his tweets, his policies, and sometimes he is clearly uncouth. But I would be lying if I said the GOP must take note and fastidious study of the Trump campaign strategy of expanding the tent. The country demographics are quickly changing. It’s no secret that for decades Republican voters have largely been white, many of them older. The GOP clearly needs more diversity. Indeed, the census projected that whites would be the minority by 2045. 2045 things are changing. It’s crucial that my party, the Republican party, woos more minority voters. Republicans shouldn’t change their principles to accommodate new voices, of course not. We shouldn’t. We’re the GOP, we’re proud that we started our beginning foundation in 1854 in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act which wanted to expand slavery. I’m proud of the party, although it’s imperfect. I have been a conservative Republican for over a decade. When I joined the party, the prevailing philosophy was if you weren’t a conservative on every issue, then you weren’t a true Republican. That stubborn, myopic attitude kept the tent limited. We must go in to neighborhoods like Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, places where nonwhite voters live and make our case. These people know that their school systems are failing them. The government on a local level is failing them. The crime is too high, and opportunities are fleeting from them more and more. Let’s not forget that liberal COVID policies have decimated their ability to earn income. Let’s speak directly to those voters, and go after them in a respectful way and pull them into the tent like Trump did. That’s the only way to save my party, the GOP, and the country for future generations. Now that I’ve addressed that, I want to talk about my next guest. My next guest is a member of the Trump family, who’s been leading the way in terms of President Trump’s campaign efforts and who’s going to enlighten us on secrets of the Trump family that we hadn’t before, things that I’m sure you will find very, very intriguing. This is OutLoud with Gianno Caldwell.
Gianno: Thank you for coming. It’s such a pleasure and an honor to be with you.
Lara: Thank you Gianno for having me.
Gianno: So, I want to start off with asking you a simple question here: How’s your father-in-law doing? Is he in good spirits? Give us an idea of how the president is thinking these days after Election Day.
Lara: Well, he is in good spirits. He very clearly knows that he won this election and if you go back to 2016, he has gained 11 million more votes at this point than he had then. It’s a record number for an incumbent president to receive in a reelection bid. Unfortunately, we’re having to work harder than most, and probably harder than we should be, but we’ve been used to that. He’s in good spirits, he’s optimistic, he’s well-informed on all the legal battles and everything we have going on across the country. Just like all of us, he wants to see the right thing happen, and he wants every legal vote to be counted. He believes that when that happens that he will be the victor of this election.
Gianno: That’s a really great point because you’ve been a vocal and passionate defender of the president, arguing that he can still win this election. I think you mentioned here, every legal vote counted. Can you walk us through the strategy to ensure that every legal vote is counted, therefore ensuring his victory?
Lara: Well, there are so many fronts on which we can do this. I think if you just look at the fact that we’ve had hundreds of affidavits signed across the country by people who witnessed voter fraud that were either not allowed as poll watchers to get anywhere near the ballots being checked to have any shot to see what was going on with those. Whether you’ve heard these stories about people finding bags of Trump ballots dumped somewhere. I saw on Sean Hannity’s show recently they had these three individuals on there that all signed affidavits, all testified in Pennsylvania to their witnessing voter fraud, and it’s rampant, unfortunately, throughout the country. We’ve had hearings going on in Michigan, Arizona, and we’re continuing to get hundreds of people coming out and saying what they saw or what happened to them. Someone would tell them that they already voted because apparently their name had been used illegally. We have people that have been dead for decades, a lot of them, hundreds of dead people voting, people voting in two states, underage people voting, illegal people voting. So look, what you hear out there I think from a lot of folks is this narrative that there aren’t going to be enough votes that you guys find in regard to this fraud to overturn an election. But I think when you start peeling back the onion, what we have found in every case is that just one instance of voter fraud leads you down a path of finding more and more and more.
Lara: The thing we don’t have on our side is time quite frankly, because there is a finite end to when we have to have all this finalized. That said, we have until December 14th when the electors vote in each state. We have the state legislators who have the ability to decide where each electoral vote for every state goes. We have this possibly ending up in Congress and we have lawsuits all over the country in numerous states where we want recounts, because the signature verification was basically turned off in many cases around the country with these voting machines. There are a lot of fronts on which we are fighting, but I can tell you, every day we hear more and more instances of fraud, illegal votes, votes not being counted, and multiple counts of Biden votes. It’s a really upsetting thing, we want this to be right Gianno, not just for this election but for the future of America. If you’re able to allow fraud in one election, then people will never have confidence in the electoral system in this country.
Gianno: I 100 percent agree with you. Now, AG Barr has said that he didn’t see at this moment enough fraud to overturn the results of the election. Clearly, there’s still an investigation going on it seems in multiple fronts. Are you optimistic about being victorious after all things are said and done by December 14th?
Lara: I think we are, and we have to remain that way. We are fighting on all fronts in every way we can, and I appreciate what the Attorney General said, but you know it’s not lost on anyone that this is the same DOJ that allowed illegal spying on the Trump campaign. I think in a lot of people’s opinions, there are a lot of biased individuals within the DOJ and not everything necessarily runs through them, a lot these are battles on a state level and not a federal level. I understand that he said that, but I don’t think that it was all fully taken in the context of what we have going. But we remain optimistic, we are out battling every day and doing everything we can to make sure this is a legitimate election.
Gianno: Putting aside the presidential race for a moment, Republicans are feeling good about the GOP gaining several seats in the House, including a record number of women, what are your thoughts on the GOP’s performance now with the strong showing of women?
Lara: Gosh, it wasn’t the blue wave that the Democrats talked about was it? We overtook quite a few seats and we flipped a lot of the Democrat seats. A lot of the times when we flipped a Democrat seat to Republican, it was a woman who won that seat. Look, we are so proud of the women that are going to be representing people all across this country in Congress as Republicans and the majority is very, very slim for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the house right now. We feel really positive about that. I think it speaks to the fact that many people in this country rejected, quite frankly, what the Democrats were trying to peddle. People said we don’t want to defund our police, we want our country to be back open, we want secure borders, we want to be able to choose for ourselves. This is the United States of America after all, we enjoy our freedoms, we enjoy our 2nd Amendment rights. I think a lot of people stood up very loudly and said we are rejecting the socialist policies the Democrats are pushing out. It’s very interesting, and this is another thing, I know we’re not talking specifically about the presidential race, but Gianno, you have on ballot, Republicans winning across the board overwhelmingly, and then at the top of the ticket they somehow chose Joe Biden? It doesn’t make sense when you statistically look at the numbers. Something is wrong here. That said, we’re really proud of all the Republicans that will be represented in Congress for this session, and I think for 2022 we’re going to gain back the majority in the House, and I expect we’ll keep the majority in the Senate. We feel really positive on that.
Gianno: That brings me to my next question: North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. Which outperformed expectations, and from what I understand, you were responsible, personally, for the victories in North Carolina, which I think is good news. What can you tell us about the potential that you may run for Senate in North Carolina? You want to break any news on OutLoud with Gianno Caldwell today? This is the outlet if you want to do it
Lara: Is this the space? Well, I don’t have any news to break today unfortunately, but North Carolina is my home state. My entire family lives there, my parents still live in the house that I came home from the hospital to. It is my home and always will be. So, in 2016, the way I became involved in the campaign was my father-in-law basically said to me, “You’re from the state of North Carolina, can you help me win it?” Don’t forget that Hillary Clinton said in 2016 that North Carolina would be her firewall, she was absolutely going to win it. My father-in-law tasked me with helping him win. In 2016, I started Women for Trump, we had a bus tour that went through North Carolina and all over the country. I spent a lot of time there on the ground, which I love doing, any excuse to go back home. It was no different in 2020, we did the same thing, we fought hard. North Carolina is a very tough state to win though. It is a state that you see an influx of people from New York and New Jersey moving down to North Carolina because it is a fantastic state. They have great schools, they have a great quality of life down there, businesses are booming. It was something that I worked very hard for, and I’m so proud that we have won now a second time around North Carolina for the president. As it relates to Senate, we’re obviously working on this battle right now, and I do have a little bit of time to decide on that, but I could think of nothing greater than to represent the people of my home state, represent North Carolina. I named my daughter Carolina after my home state because I love it so much. There is a lot to consider, I think people have very clearly seen the way we’ve been treated as a family since Donald Trump announced he was running for and became president. Our family is under constant scrutiny. They constant make up stories about us. The number of lies that have been printed about all of us or said on national television would shock people and most I don’t think would say I want to put myself back through that. But that said, I think we’ve also seen the really positive side of things, which is you can affect really positive change for people, and you can be a representee for so many. It would be an honor truly, but haven’t decided yet. We’re still figuring that out.
Gianno: Yeah, it sounds like you’ve decided! You gave a lot of positives…
Lara: I mean it would be amazing. Who wouldn’t want to represent their home state? Who wouldn’t want to give a shot at something like that? But truly, on the other side of the coin, they make life really challenging for us. There’s constant negative attention and scrutiny on us. So, we’ll see, we’ll talk about it some more.
Gianno: Well, you all are fighters. You’re fighters for sure. Now that’s interesting because there’s people that are taking you possibly running for Senate very seriously. It was reported that Mark Walker, a former Baptist pastor from Greensboro, just announced that he’s running for North Carolina’s open seat in 2022. The New York Times has also reported that what he’s doing is to ward you off so you won’t run. I mean this is very interesting, they’re taking you very seriously.
Lara: I mean, I’m sort of flattered by that I guess I should say, but you know that’s on him. If he’s ready to announce he’s running, getting his campaign going, you know good for him. That wouldn’t be a deterrent necessarily for anyone in our family. We’ve been up against the fake news media, the Democrats, Hollywood, liberal elites, we’ve been up against everybody. So, that wouldn’t be a deterrent, but maybe we’ll see who the full competition would be beforehand, maybe that would be a good thing.
Gianno: I know there’s been attacks on your family, you mentioned the spying in 2016. Obviously, the impeached the president. There’s been a number of things going on, be it the DOJ, whatever is going on in New York City with the investigations. It’s been reported that President Trump has discussed the possibility of preemptively pardoning some members of your family in a run up to a potential Biden administration. Is there anything you’d like to comment on in regards to that?
Lara: Well, I don’t really know much about it to tell you the truth. I think that what you’ve seen happen to this president is really unprecedented in so many ways. It really should disturb most Americans. That fact that you can have the House of Representatives impeach the President of the United States for really no good reason. We know they spent two years on the Russia collusion hoax Gianno, we know that cost tens of millions of tax payer dollars, and quite frankly, agony for most of America for two years, only to find out on the other side of it what we all knew and said from the beginning: that we did not collude with Russia to win the election in 2016. It was such a ridiculous notion and I think that for all of us, we laughed at it at first and then realized that these people are serious. Then, you fast forward to the phone call with Ukraine and the hysteria over that, and then you look at the other side of things. You look at Joe Biden and the Biden family, specifically his son Hunter, and the way that the New York Post story was swept under the rug. The way that the big tech companies, the social media giants would not allow that to come out because it was two weeks until the presidential election. No questions for Joe Biden by any mainstream media outlets on that. There is a very, very clear double standard and it should be clear that these people are out to get any member of the Trump family, quite frankly, that they can. My brother-in-law, Don, had to testify numerous times on Capitol Hill. I mean it’s crazy. This is the United States, this shouldn’t be happening. So, what I can say is we all know that they’re going to go out of their way to try to make our lives miserable, as hard as they possibly can and probably to try to do everything they can to, I don’t know, throw us all in jail, get us out of the country, I don’t really know what their angle is. I don’t necessarily know about any pardons, but we all know that we under so much scrutiny and they are looking for anything we say or do wrong, to capitalize and punish us for. It’s really sad because none of us ever expected to be in politics, but I can tell you we love this country, we’re patriots, we want to fight to see the right things happen always in America, especially right now because I think a lot of people have seen how frightening the folks on the other side can be, and gosh if they got their way this would be an unrecognizable country.
Gianno: Yeah, and it seems to be that those who are in these elite positions, you think back to the Obama-Biden Administration, folks that spied on the president’s campaign, all those things that occurred, it seems there’s not been any justice. Do you know why that is? The president is in the White House. The DOJ is his DOJ. Why haven’t they arrested or put anybody in jail? Why are their leaders continuing to get away with wrongdoing?
Lara: Well, it’s a great question. I think you ask a lot of people, and they know that the deep state is real, they know that Donald Trump is a threat to so much of what has been allowed to transpire in Washington DC for so long. Don’t forget, this is a man that needs nothing from Washington DC. He’s not looking to make his name bigger; he’s not looking for a book deal at the end. He took no money from lobbyists or special interest groups. He’s beholden only to the American people and that represents a very big threat to the way things have operated in Washington DC for so long. He wants to get us out of all the wars, the endless wars around the world that the United States doesn’t need to be involved in. That’s threatening to a lot of people making a lot of money Gianno, off of those wars. There are so many instances like that out there where people start looking at all of the facts and all the things this president has done. It is astounding that no one has been arrested; it is astounding that nothing has happened with respect to all the wrongdoing against the Trump campaign and the sitting President of the United States. But I think that’s why so many people want four more years of Donald Trump. We are not done draining the swamp. There is a lot of dirt that needs to be cleared out of Washington DC, and it takes a lot of effort and time to do that. So, for whatever reason, I think there are probably still some bad apples left in the Department of Justice, and it’s really sad to see. That’s another reason why we really want to make sure that this election is done the proper way and that Donald Trump gets four more years.
Gianno: Yeah, that transparency is 100 percent important. In the event that whatever reason it doesn’t turn out victorious as we would hope for President Trump, we talked a lot about mainstream media and the corruption there earlier, inaccuracy, sources that don’t exist, is it at all possible that there may be a Trump TV network that comes out or some type of media organization to produce the news and facts you would want out there?
Lara: I mean I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility. We started at the campaign during COVID, we called it Team Trump Online and we had programming seven nights a week, we got millions of views on most of our programs and shows we pushed out. So, there is an interest, and I think a lot of people feel that way. People are yearning for an outlet that does not give them bias media coverage, that tells them the things they’re not going to otherwise hear. That’s really why we started doing it ourselves, quite frankly, because we knew no one else would get the info out there to people. There’s always a possibility that something like that happens. Again, I have no news to break here unfortunately. But we’ll see what happens. I think that we all have come out of this, and hopefully it ends four years from now and not now, but I think we all know that we can’t just stop fighting for this country. You can’t just sit down and go back to normal life and say, “Well, someone else will figure out this fight.” We are all as a family in this fight to protect America, to keep this country the greatest in the world, to protect our freedoms, to uphold the Constitution. We are willing to continue the fight. That may come in many different forms, I don’t think anything has been fully discussed on that front as we’re still in the fight for this election, but anything is possible so we’ll see what happens.
Gianno: My final question, and this is by far the most important: After attending North Carolina State University and at the French Culinary Institute in New York with a focus on pastries I believe, what are your favorite things to bake and cook?
Lara: Well, if you ask my husband, he’ll give you this long answer about how I never bake anything for him and that I’m the worst because I used to make ice cream cakes. I used to even have a cake company actually called Lara Lea Confections, so I did all kinds of crazy cakes for people. My favorite thing right now is truly anything I can make with my kids. I have a one-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, so anything they can be involved with, which is usually like Rice Krispy treats at this point. I do have a really good peanut butter brownie recipe, that when I break it out, I’ll tell you what, those things go really fast. They’re very rich but that’s always a request that my friends will ask when am I brining those back. So, that’s probably a fan favorite at this point.
Gianno: I hope I can get a bite of one of those in the future. That would be awesome. Now, how can people reach you?
Lara: You can find me on Instagram and on Twitter @laraleatrump on both. The same thing on Facebook. I post a lot of pictures of my kids and my dog, but if you don’t mind that, you can check me out there.
Gianno: I want to thank you for coming on OutLoud with Gianno Caldwell, and I want to wish you well in what I’m sure will be a future Senate race. Thank you for coming, we appreciate your time and dedication to this country.
Lara: Thank you. It’s great to be with you, and the fight continues. We’re not done yet.
