Will Lara Trump Serve as a Trump 2024 Trial Balloon?

Former President Donald Trump (R-FL)

I suspect you've already heard, but this weekend the Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial.  Overall, I thought this was a disappointing end to this conversation, even if it was an expected one.  Trump deserved to be convicted, and he also deserves to be criminally liable for the actions that he took that led to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, but I did not have confidence that this would occur.  I think the Democrats missed the boat in not calling witnesses, and I think that Chuck Schumer & other big-talking progressive senators deserve the anger from the grassroots he's going to get for a while for not at the very least calling Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler to the stand to testify on what she heard from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in the wake of the call.  The revelation that the congresswoman heard a call between McCarthy & Trump where Trump (during the attack) was basically telling McCarthy it was his fault for not backing his election enough that this was happening was damning, horrifying, and an indication of what we all suspected-that Trump was happy with what happened on January 6th, and his months of encouraging the behavior was not superficial, but tactical.  I have no defense of Democrats here-they badly screwed up on that front, and should have called the congresswoman (and potentially Senator Mike Lee, who took a phone call from Trump during the siege) forward to testify about Trump's state-of-mind at the time & what he was doing in phone calls to leaders, and to show the American people that he clearly did not care that Vice President Pence, the Second Family, and members of Congress were in mortal danger.

It's hard to know if this would've made a tangible difference in the final balance of the senators.  For all of the talk in the aftermath of the 57-43 vote tally about "establishment Republicans" like Rob Portman, Deb Fischer, & Shelley Moore Capito, I don't know that there's anything more than could've been done by the House Impeachment managers, even with Herrera Beutler or Lee being called as witnesses, considering the evidence was overwhelming.  The videos that came forward painted a shocking, more dire situation than I think any of us could have imagined even if we were watching the coverage live.  It's very clear that Mike Pence, Chuck Schumer, & Mitt Romney (as well as countless others, but these three stood out in particular considering the videos) were potentially seconds away from being overrun by a violent mob.  What wasn't stated directly out-loud but was obviously implicit in the testimonies of the House impeachment managers was that we just barely missed either a massive counter defense on the Capitol grounds against the insurrectionists (of law enforcement being forced to injure or kill rioters to protect public officials) or high-ranking figures in the government being kidnapped, attacked, or murdered in a way that has never been seen in American politics.  It says something to me that more senators than I would've guessed (not just the expected Republicans but also figures like Richard Burr & Bill Cassidy) backed the conviction of former President Trump, and I do think these videos & Herrera Beutler's public statements probably swayed people like Burr & Cassidy that this was a moment of moral conscience that they couldn't deny.  I think that witnesses would've underlined this fact for more Americans of what happened, but considering they had access to what everyone else saw & knew what would've come from further testimony, I don't think that the likes of Portman, Capito, or Fischer were persuadable.  I think at this point they are basically just Marjorie Greene with better table manners, totally bought into Trump's vision for the party & country.

The Senate did not convict Donald Trump, and while he'll always bear the cross of being impeached twice, the second time by a large, bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress, he can still run in 2024 if he so chooses.  I think that Sen. Murkowski's (who did vote to convict, for the record) comments that Trump won't be able to win the nomination in 2024 after this are just wishful thinking, but I also think that if Trump is serious about running for president in 2024 (and I suspect he will be...he does not like the tag of being a loser for the rest of time which is what will happen after 2020), he's going to try & run some trial balloons through the party in 2022, and we need to be able to tell the difference between what is bluster & what could be more concrete about Trump's plans.

I want to be very clear-Donald Trump not being in office has been extremely good for my personal health, and while this is a site that devotes itself to conversations about elections coverage (including articles about the upcoming presidential primaries), I'm not going to continue to discuss him ad nauseum over the next four years, and reporting on his every electoral move.  It's bad for my mental health (one of many reasons I voted for Biden was that I couldn't mentally stomach having to put up with Trump for four more years in the national conversation, and I intend to reap the fruits of that victory), and I think it's a waste of time & falling into the trap that the media should've avoided in 2016.  Trump's main reason for living is attracting headlines, and of course he is going to spend the next four years talking about running for president to get those clicks, but I am not playing that game.  I have a site policy that we only truly focus on the next federal election (in this case 2022) unless something big happens, and so we wouldn't be discussing the presidential race anyway, and there's nothing interesting about talking about Donald Trump in 2024 until he actually launches a campaign or sends a signal he will.  I take his chances in both the primary & the general seriously (I learned my lessons from 2016 & 2020), but writing endless articles about "will he run?" is a waste of my time & yours as a reader, and we should enjoy the peace.

But before we lay that aside, I want to talk about Trump in relation to 2022.  Serious presidential bids send signals of their intentions before they run, and serious presidential candidates act as ambassadors for candidates in the midterms to get in front of crowds again.  Trump is likely to be recruited to campaign for a number of Republicans in 2022, as the former president is still popular with the base, but Trump (who has a serious aversion to losing, and would not want to suffer the humiliation of a second loss) is not just going to want to see if some of his disciples like Sarah Huckabee Sanders can win statewide-I think if Trump is serious about testing the waters for 2024, he's going to run one of his own family in 2022.

Lara Trump

This is why it was noteworthy to me that Sen. Lindsey Graham, Trump's most loyal supporter on Capitol Hill, started to float the name of Lara Trump this past weekend.  Ms. Trump, who is the former president's daughter-in-law, has been rumored to be seeking the open North Carolina Senate seat.  The seat is vacant due to Sen. Richard Burr's retirement, and Burr was one of the seven senators who voted to convict, meaning that a big question for Republicans in that race will be if they supported the conviction or if they sided with the incumbent.  Graham alluded as such, saying that this will be a big question and that "the biggest winner of this whole impeachment trial is Lara Trump."

If Ms. Trump runs (nothing is official yet), it will be a sign to me that her father-in-law is genuinely serious about taking another swing at the White House in 2024.  He would have to give his blessing for her to make a play, and unlike someone like Huckabee Sanders, she'd be using the Trump brandname (which the former president values) at the ballot boat to try to win high office, so he's not going to do this without knowing that it could be something he could test for 2024.  North Carolina is not a ruby-red state, but it is a state that Donald Trump won in 2020 (it was the closest swing state that he won), so the younger Trump's success could either indicate that there was an appetite for a third presidential run from the elder Trump, or (if she lost) a sign that 2024 would be a copy of 2020 rather than 2016.

This plan isn't flawless or without consequence.  Lara Trump has never run for public office, and there's no indication that she'd have the same ability with Trump's most ardent supporters in turning out low-propensity voters...it's not apples to apples.  And it comes with the potential that Trump, through a surrogate, will appear weaker in 2024 if she doesn't win.  North Carolina is a marginal state, one the GOP must win in 2024, and if she lost a state he'd won twice (this is plausible-it's a swing state for a reason), Trump would appear vulnerable in the general, and his 2024 opponents would have proof that he can't win a second term.  It also puts at risk a Senate seat that could be crucial for majority control not just in 2022, but also 2024 & 2026 (Mitch McConnell would surely favor a more conventional candidate like Rep. Ted Budd or former Governor Pat McCrory to Lara Trump), though it's doubtful (given his indifference on January 6th to the wellbeing of Congress) that Republican control of the Senate will factor into Trump's decision-making process.  He cares about if the Trump brandname is strong, less so if the Republicans hold the seat.  As a result, I think if Lara Trump runs for the Senate in 2022, it will be a sign that the former president is seriously (and not just rhetorically) looking at a third run for the White House after Senate Republicans once again let him get off for committing impeachable offenses.