Lara Trump's Transformation Is A Sight To See

Lara Trump has so fully assimilated into her husband's family that it's hard to believe she wasn't born with her famous surname. But when she first met Eric Trump, she had no idea she'd someday become a cog in Donald Trump's political machine. "I certainly never thought that I'd end up with the last name Trump," she said in her 2020 RNC speech. The same year she delivered that speech, she told USA Today she had cared little about politics before the 2016 presidential race.

Now Lara isn't just a Trump; she's daydreaming about running for office alongside her father-in-law. Lara hosts a podcast called "The Right View" and regularly answers questions from fans in a sinister-sounding segment called "Wanted for Questioning." In response to a listener who asked if she would be Donald's running mate, her answer was an unequivocal yes. "Just imagine the hysteria: Trump-Trump," she said. "Two Trumps running together. Oh my god, the liberal heads across the country would simultaneously explode!" Instead, Lara accepted a different role, albeit just as important: working to help her father-in-law achieve his political ambitions. Along the way, she's undergone quite the transformation from a Carolina girl who once harbored nonpolitical dreams to a major political power player.

After graduating high school, Lara Trump remained in her home state to pursue a higher education. She had difficulty choosing what to major in when she enrolled at North Carolina State University. "I thought perhaps I would parlay my love of sports into some sort of a sports medicine route," she said on "The Right View." However, she decided obtaining a medical degree would require spending too much time in school, so she eventually settled on a communications major. According to Trump's One Model Place portfolio, she worked at Hooters during college, won a few bikini contests, and posed for the men's magazine Stuff a few months before she graduated in 2005. She also participated in Maxim's Hometown Hotties competition.

After college, it seems Lara gave up on finding fame as a model. She returned home and put her degree to use by working as an intern at two local news stations. "It was great to have that start in local news because it can get overwhelming going up from there," she told StarNews Online. However, she took a little vocational detour before her broadcast career hit the big time.

One of the weirdest things about Lara Trump and Eric Trump's marriage is the story of how they met. When she was out one night in New York, Lara noticed the Trump heir because he was taller than her. Lara is 5-foot-11, so it's a rarity for her to meet a guy who still has a few inches on her when she's wearing heels. The two started chatting, and Lara mentioned she was in culinary school. That's when Eric put his hands on her waist and dropped a pickup line that possibly would have earned him a drink in the face if he'd used it on a different woman. "He was like, 'I bet all of your cooking tastes like garbage because it doesn't seem like you've been eating any of it," Lara recalled on "The Right View."

Eric's rather rude assumption left a lasting impression on Lara, who told "She Rises Studios" that she hadn't recognized the guy she was talking to as a Trump son. Lara was nervous about meeting Eric's parents for the first time when she attended the U.S. Open with the Trump clan, but Donald Trump used a chilly dessert as an icebreaker. "There was no grilling, not a ton of questions. Just nice hellos and ice cream," Lara recalled to StarNews Online.

When Donald Trump launched his first presidential campaign in 2015, Lara Trump worked at "Inside Edition" as an associate producer. On "The Right View," she said that one of her most memorable experiences working for the news magazine was shooting a story about Lake Superior's ice caves. She had to stand on the frozen lake and recalled being told, "If you fall through the ice, by the time someone comes to rescue you, you'll already be dead." Lara also mentioned the incident that partially informed her decision to step away from the show to focus on helping her father-in-law with his presidential campaign. "I became a story while I worked there when someone sent us an envelope full of white powder," she recalled.

According to The New York Times, Donald used to say that he would be unable to pick Lara "out of a lineup." However, according to Lara, a conversation with Donald about her home state made him realize that she could be useful to him. "In only the way that Donald Trump can, he said, 'You know what, I want to put you in charge of winning North Carolina,'" Lara recalled to The Telegraph. Donald won the state when he won the presidency, and Lara has kept her fortunes tied to her father-in-law ever since.

According to Lara Trump, Eric Trump wasn't a big dog lover when they first met. But two years into their relationship, they adopted their first dog: a rescue beagle named Charlie. "It took a lot of convincing," Lara told Fox News. Luckily, Charlie quickly won Eric over and even served as the couple's ring bearer when they got hitched.

Lara hoped she could similarly convince her father-in-law and his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, to adopt a rescue dog. Such a move would have potentially helped Donald score some points with the large contingent of canine lovers that make up America's voting populace. "I am working on it as hard as I can! I think they probably will," Lara said during a 2017 appearance on "Mornings with Maria."

Donald never did adopt a dog, but while Lara was chairperson for The Big Dog Ranch Rescue, he was happy to let the nonprofit host charity events at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump venues — as long as it paid for the privilege. Lara and Eric did their best to make up for the lack of a first dog by adopting an adorable "foster fail" named Ben in 2017.

Lara Trump didn't let her second pregnancy slow her down. When Queen Elizabeth II extended an invitation to Donald Trump for a state visit in 2019, he brought his extended family with him to Buckingham Palace — including his unborn granddaughter. "Knowing that one day I'll tell this baby about the adventure overseas and all that happened while in my belly made everything all the more meaningful," Lara told Hello! of her trip to London. She also revealed that the queen was the royal she was most excited to meet.

Back stateside, Lara busied herself campaigning for her father-in-law. When she was eight months into her pregnancy, she headed to Pennsylvania to speak at a Women for Trump event. Per The Washington Post, she told the crowd that Donald had sacrificed his life of leisure for their sake.

Lara was finally forced to take a break from traveling and trying to keep her father-in-law in the White House when she went into labor in August 2019. On her podcast, Lara said that her daughter is named Carolina after her home state. Her middle name, Dorothy, is a tribute to both Lara's grandmother and one of Eric Trump's childhood nannies.

Lara Trump's years of being a fulsome media surrogate for Donald Trump culminated in Donald giving her his full-throated endorsement for the role of RNC co-chair in 2024. Lara's subsequent takeover of the RNC was controversial because it seemed like a blatant conflict of interest — and she had vowed to prioritize her father-in-law's reelection to a degree that would potentially be detrimental to down-ticket Republican candidates. "We need to make sure that every penny of every dollar donated to the RNC is going to Donald Trump's campaign," she told a crowd of supporters in South Carolina, per Bloomberg. No wonder Donald has become such a big fan of his daughter-in-law. "He always tells me that I'm a secret weapon," Lara boasted to The Wall Street Journal.

One of Donald's Republican rivals took issue with the Trumps running the party like a family business. "He's going to make the RNC his own legal slush fund," Nikki Haley predicted. Lara had ruffled some feathers by saying that Republican voters would support the RNC's funds being used to pay Trump's legal bills, per AP. She later assured NBC News this was not something the committee was prioritizing.