Lara Trump All but Begs Ron DeSantis for Senate Gig

Lara Trump seems to be going all in in her quest for the Florida Senate seat being vacated by secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio.

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law resigned from her position as co-chair of the Republican National Committee Sunday, fueling speculation that she is in line for the post. If Rubio is confirmed, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would be in charge of appointing a replacement to fill the rest of Rubio’s term, which ends in 2026.

“It is something I would seriously consider,” Lara Trump told the Associated Press. “If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like. And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”

Trump was appointed as co-chair of the RNC in March in a sign of the president-elect’s full takeover of the GOP. During her tenure, her father-in-law won the presidential election and the popular vote and Republicans also managed to win both the Senate and the House.

Her bid for the Florida Senate seat has received backing from MAGA personalities as well as the Republican base. For example, Maye Musk, the mother of billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, posted her support for the president-elect’s daughter on X last month, and her son also posted, “Lara Trump is genuinely great.” Trump returned the favor, praising Musk’s so-called plan to improve government efficiency along with fellow Republican executive Vivek Ramaswamy.

“I really don’t think we’ve seen movement like this in our federal government since our country’s founding in many ways,” Trump said. “And I think if they are successful in what they plan to do, I think it is going to be transformative to America in a great way.”

DeSantis will be under a lot of pressure to appoint a member of the Trump family to the Senate seat, especially after the endorsement from the world’s richest man. Musk spent over $250 million on the election in order to get Donald Trump reelected and now wields tremendous influence in the Republican Party. DeSantis has bigger ambitions than governor of Florida and knows that keeping Musk and the president-elect happy can only help his prospects.

Trump is very OK with deporting U.S. citizens to achieve his grim vision for America.

The president-elect sat for a testy, nearly hour-long interview with Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker, in which he doubled down on some of the cruelest parts of his “Day 1” platform.

“I don’t want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump said.

“Even kids who are here legally?” Welker asked.

“We have to have rules and regulations. You can always find something out like, you know, ‘This doesn’t work. That doesn’t work,’” Trump continued. “I’ll tell you what’s going to be horrible, when we take a wonderful young woman who’s with a criminal. And they show the woman … being taken out. Or they want her out and your cameras are focused on her as she’s crying as she’s being taken out of our country. And then the public turns against us. But we have to do our job. And you have to have a series of standards and a series of laws. And in the end, look, our country is a mess.”

The president-elect calmly acknowledged how evil, damaging, and unpopular the policy would be to American families. But he seems to think that deporting entire families, rather than separating them at the border like he did in his first term, will be more palatable. Regardless of how he tries to do it, the “largest deportation operation in American history” is likely to be a painful mess, especially given that he wants to send deportees back to random countries. The president-elect also wants to end one of the most basic tenets of the constitution—birthright citizenship.

Donald Trump still can’t promise positive dividends for Americans as a result of his “concepts” of an economic plan.

The president-elect dodged a direct question regarding his tariff plan during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, refusing to acknowledge that his intent to impose massive tariffs on three of the United States’ biggest trading partners would ultimately hurt American wallets.

“Economists of all stripes say that ultimately, consumers pay the price of tariffs. Can you guarantee American families won’t pay more?” asked NBC’s Kristen Welker.

“I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow. But I can say that if you look at my—just pre-Covid, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country—and I had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries, but in particular China,” Trump said.

He then boasted that he had effectively created the post-Covid boom, which saw the American economy returning to life (thanks to President Joe Biden’s efforts) after almost completely stagnating due to the global pandemic.

Trump then falsely claimed that Mexico and Canada’s trade deficits with the United States were “subsidies,” rather than indicators that America’s neighbors are purchasing more of its goods than they’re selling in return. In 2023, that differential—or deficit—was nearly $41 billion with Canada and $162 billion with Mexico, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Trump also vastly overinflated the reality of the deficits, wrongly asserting that the U.S. is “subsidizing” its neighbors to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars each.

The solution to that fake problem, according to Trump, is to turn Mexico and Canada into states.

“If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We’re subsidizing Mexico, and we’re subsidizing Canada, and we’re subsidizing many countries all over the world,” Trump said. “And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field.”

Trump declines to guarantee that his tariffs won’t spike inflation pic.twitter.com/28GEzdEc7a

Trump has promised to tackle inflation by imposing extreme tax cuts and........

© New Republic