After the election, Lara Trump had options. She had just completed a successful stint as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, and her father-in-law, Donald Trump, was soon to become the most powerful person on earth. Initially, he wanted her to replace Marco Rubio, his choice for Secretary of State, in the U.S. Senate. Elon Musk offered her a position in the Department of Government Efficiency, his radical cost-cutting operation.
Ultimately, though, Lara chose another route: her own show on Fox News.
As with many things in Trump 2.0, it’s a situation without precedent. Never before has a close relative of a sitting President hosted a high-profile program on a major news network. The debut of “My View with Lara Trump” on Saturday marks a capstone in the symbiotic relationship between Trump and Fox. While the President has plucked at least 19 Fox News personalities for senior positions in the administration, one of the people he’s closest to will soon become the channel’s newest primetime host.
Lara’s show comes after a rocky four-year period between Trump World and Fox, dating back to Election Night 2020, when the network was the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden. That acrimony accelerated the outgrowth of hard-right media organizations that pitch themselves as alternatives to Fox, from Newsmax and One America News Network to Right Side Broadcasting Network and Real America’s Voice. In the eyes of some Trump supporters, Fox News was no longer seen as a bastion for the MAGA faithful. “If anyone feels that way,” Lara Trump tells TIME, “I certainly hope they can take me being on the team at Fox as a very clear indication as to where Fox stands.”
To critics, Lara Trump’s elevation is a feature of her father-in-law’s stranglehold on the conservative media ecosystem. “A lot of this is symbolism,” says Jason Stanley, a Yale University professor and media scholar. “It’s Fox showing its obsequiousness.” Others argue her show marks a deeper shift into broadcasting full-on propaganda for the Trump Administration. They fear, among other things, that Trump has effectively captured two of the most powerful communications streams to mobilize support over the next four years: the nation’s most-watched cable news network and an influential social media service owned by Musk. Says Stanley: “The opposition has neither X nor Fox.”
In many ways, Fox News makes sense as the next step for Lara Trump, who was a paid contributor for the network before Trump tapped her as RNC co-chair in March 2024. In that role, she helped raise hundreds of millions and served as a TV surrogate for the campaign. Many suspected Trump was grooming her to one day carry on the MAGA torch. Shortly after the election, she had a chance to serve in Congress when Rubio’s nomination created an open Senate seat from Florida, where Lara lives with her family. While Lara considered the job, she says, she opted out for the same reason she didn’t run for an open Senate seat from North Carolina in 2022, citing her two young children.
“You’re the only person who would have had an opportunity to be a Senator twice, and twice you’ve decided not to do it,” Trump often ribs her, according to Lara.
Instead of crafting legislation, she will try to shape narratives every Saturday at 9 p.m, focusing on long-form interviews with Trump officials and other leading figures in the MAGA political universe. Her debut will include a segment on the “Women of the Trump White House,” featuring interviews with Attorney General Pam Bondi, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. The segment, Lara says, will serve as a response to billionaire Mark Cuban’s comments last fall that Trump doesn’t associate with “strong, intelligent women.”
Trump’s allies see the show as the clearest sign yet that Fox has fully re-embraced the President. After Trump lost the 2020 election and a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the network sought to distance itself from him. Early in the last campaign cycle, a retinue of Fox hosts and contributors promoted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over Trump, leading to a rift between the two. Shortly after Trump launched his White House run in November 2022, there was a months-long stretch when he shunned the network entirely.
“Millions of MAGA voters were understandably furious with Fox for its persistent anti-Trump slant during the off-years,” says Alex Bruesewitz, the CEO of X Strategies and a Trump advisor. “But this is a smart move and certainly a step in the right direction.”
During that period, a constellation of right-wing networks, podcasts, and platforms gained attention by branding themselves as MAGA puritans who stayed loyal to Trump. “We had nothing,” says Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and host of War Room, a popular hard-right podcast. “We had Trump. We had this show. Fox abandoned us.” Tommy Firth, a Fox News executive who oversees primetime programming, says the rebellion against Fox was a “business decision” by some MAGA personalities to elevate their own media properties. “I think they were created or put out into the ether to take a bite out of us,” he says.
In some ways, they have. Shows like Bannon’s have become increasingly influential on the right. But while more and more of the Trump coalition consumes news and information from non-traditional sources—such as the podcasts Trump frequented during the campaign—Fox News remains the number one cable network. To that end, it’s a power center in Trump’s Washington, especially as he seeks to corral public support for his aggressive second term agenda.
“He’s an avid Fox viewer. I don’t think that’s lost on anyone,” says Lara Trump. “He loved having me there before. After every hit I ever did, he was probably the first or second person to call or text me.”
