Lara Trump told NBC News in a new interview that her father-in-law’s 2020 election loss is “in the past,” a stark departure from the election denialism that former President Donald Trump and his allies, including Lara Trump herself, have peddled for years.
The new co-chair of the Republican National Committee, Lara Trump has previously promoted lies about the 2020 election and said that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. But when asked whether the RNC holds the position that the 2020 election was rigged, she told NBC News, “I think we’re past that. I think that’s in the past.”
“The past is the past, and unfortunately, we had to learn a couple of hard lessons in 2020,” she said. “Believe me, we are applying them all across this country in every single state, and we want to ensure that, indeed, every single legal vote is counted.”
Lara Trump also insisted to NBC News that the RNC’s early-voting push does not contradict her father-in-law’s claim that mail-in voting is littered with fraud.
“I actually think if you talk to him right now, you will see that he is very much embracing early voting,” she said, later adding that that “absolutely” includes mail-in voting.
Yet her comments conflict with Donald Trump’s fixation on his 2020 election loss, and with what is reportedly happening behind the scenes at the RNC since the former president filled its leadership ranks with loyalists — many of whom are election deniers themselves. According to The Washington Post, job candidates interviewing with the RNC have been asked if they think the 2020 election was stolen. (NBC News and MSNBC have not independently verified this reporting.) The Post reported: The question about the 2020 election has startled some of the potential employees, who viewed it as questioning their loyalty to Trump and as an unusual job interview question, according to the people familiar with the interviews.
The RNC’s new leadership also reportedly ended an early voting program, a move that my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones described as a “sign the GOP is doubling down on its standard-bearer’s antidemocratic tendencies.” Although Lara Trump appears to be fashioning a forward-looking RNC in public, in private, Trump’s allies in the RNC are still indignant about his election loss in 2020 — and potentially setting the stage for more chaos should he lose again in November.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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