Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's Quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Laura Trump, daughter in law of
President Donald Trump, former co chair of the Republican National Committee,
and world class crooner. I might add, thank you so
much for joining us onkind.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you very much. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, absolutely, let's begin with the crooning. I saw a
just quite a performance the other night at the Trump
family get together for New Year's Eve with a lot
of good friends, and you entertained the crowd. Is this
the next chapter for Laura Trump?
Speaker 2: By the way, Well, I know there would be a
lot of folks on the left who are my biggest
fans whenever I do musical endeavors, who would be very
excited if I said yes to that. Look, it's really
funny because I grew up playing the piano. I've always
been very into music and I love the arts in
all different forms. And someone said to me about a
year and a half ago, would you ever play the
piano on a cover song? And I said sure? And
they said, well, you wouldn't never sing a cover song,
would you? And I said, well, sure, somebody gave me
the opportunity, so they did, and honestly, Matt, it's been
really fun to do that, and it's kind of led
me to a whole new area and a whole new
group of people that I otherwise probably never would have met.
And I had path I never would have taken, so
I've enjoyed it. And they asked me if I would
surprise my father in law after he walked in the
room on New Year's Eve at Mar A Lago with
a little rendition of Tom Petty's I won't back down. Yes,
we all know he didn't back down, and so we
had a fun time. But no, I have an announcement
I'll be making shortly after the inauguration that is not
specific to singing or anything musical, but you'll be seeing
a lot more of me. I will say that and
tease it a little bit excellent.
Speaker 1: Well, I know I have some Federalist colleagues that would
like to see more of you on the music front,
but I know demands pull you in a lot of
different directions. And you talk about a song, you're absolutely right,
that represents Donald Trump, his persistence, his commitment to making
America great again. I can't think of another song that
fills fits that bill quite like I won't back down.
He certainly didn't when he stood up and said fight,
fight fight in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a lunatic tried to
take his life, he didn't quit. After all of the
law fair the political prosecutions, he kept going and he
said that, you know, they're really basically I'm just in
the way. That's the kind of approach that he has
taken to that I can only imagine that you and
Trump family members have to have that kind of tough skin,
an incredible tough skin, as you navigate through the political
process in America and have navigated through over the last
eight plus years in this country.
Speaker 2: Oh well, there's no doubt about that. And I actually,
you know, people reference it as having a tough skin,
but I actually kind of feel like we've all developed
a bit of a tough skin or callous, you know,
because it's funny, the first time any of us really
understood kind of how intense it might get. It was
a lot, you know, those first couple of weeks after
Donald Trump announced he was running for president in twenty fifteen.
People got very aggressive. It got very heated, very quickly.
And I actually don't think any of us in the family,
if we were all being honest, would say we anticipated
things getting as crazy as they got, at least that
first run. And it really is like the hits never
stopped coming, you know, every step of the way. It
seems like, certainly Donald Trump, but all of us in
the family have been held to a standard that's very different,
much higher than anyone else, and we all do our
best to be great citizens and good people and do
the right thing, and you know, so much so that
you look at things like the fact that the Trump
Organization during my father in law's first term in office,
made sure that any money they received be a foreign
entity was donated back to the United States Treasury. So
you had people coming in from other countries staying at
the Trump DC Hotel. Who would you know, go get
a drink at the bar, and that money went back
to the US Treasury. Now no one ever got any
credit for that. But we went above and beyond anything
that was required to make sure there wasn't even the
faintest hint of impropriety. And what did we get for that?
Absolutely nothing. You got, mar A Lago rated you got,
as you just mentioned, law Fair against Donald Trump. You
have seen things happen to this man that one of
them alone would be enough to destroy any regular person.
But I think we all kind of have looked to
him as our guide, and you know, he is so
strong in the face of so much, and he has
stood as just this steady person throughout all of it.
And a lot of times people would ask us specifically
during the time of all the law Fair, you know,
are you guys worried? Are you concerned? And of course
you're always concerned when someone you care about as being
wrongfully dragged through the mud and having all of these
things thrown his way like he had. But it's funny
because I almost looked at him as a bit of
like a flight attendant on a plane where you hit
some turbulence. Everybody looks at the flight attendant and if
the flight attendant is calm and relaxed, then everybody on
the plane is generally like, Okay, things are going to
be fine. He never once seemed like he was nervous, Matt,
He never once seemed like he was concerned that anything
but the right thing and the right outcome would happen here.
And so I think we all took a page from
his playbook and we said, if he's not concerned, then
we're not going to be concerned, and we're all going
to fight together, face forward, keep marching on. And obviously
we are so proud and so excited about the result
we got on November fifth, And it could not have
felt better to know that the American people not only
understood that he's the right choice to be president, but
didn't fall for the lies, didn't fall for the hoaxes,
didn't fall for any of it. So I think i'd
say that we've all probably taken our notes directly from
dot Trump when it comes to how to deal with
all of this.
Speaker 1: But how Laura, how I mean, this is amazing to me,
It really is. It is a testament to the human spirit.
You know, the strength of the human spirit. And I
don't know of too many other people. You know, personally,
I've been blessed to know some really good people that
could stand up against things, but you know, most of
us would wither under that kind of pressure. You mentioned
the flight attendant. You know, I've been on some heavy
turbulence flights and I've looked at the flight attendant, a
flight attendant who's been calm, and I asked the same question,
how do you remain calm during all of this? Now,
put all of that in perspective of, you know, the
international spotlight that your father in law has been under,
I would have to assume, as I've seen it over
the last several years, that faith has played an increasingly
more important role in this president's life, in his family's life.
Speaker 2: Well, you'd be one hundred percent correct on that. I mean,
I think, first of all, you know, when you know
the truth and you know the reality and that the
things being alleged against you are are false, and you
have to have faith. I think that the right thing happens,
that the truth comes out. I always have believed that
the truth would come out on all fronts about everything.
But I think specifically having a relationship with God and
having faith that he will see us through. Has been
something that certainly my father in law I think has
turned to maybe more so now than ever, and I
think especially in the wake of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.
You know, he's always been a religious person, he's always
always had a relationship with God. But there is no
doubt that this man is still standing and that he'll
be our forty seventh president because God decided that this
was the person to do it and spared his life
in a field in Pennsylvania on July thirteenth of this
past year. And he'll be the first to tell you
that himself. And I don't think you go through and
experience like he did, where you come within a millimeter
of losing your life and not come out on the
other side slightly changed by it. And I think after that,
you know, I did notice an even stronger connection that
he had with God and even you know, more engaged faith.
It's a beautiful thing to see. And I think for
me personally, that's been something that I've relied heavily on.
You know, I pray every night, Eric and I pray
with our kids every night. That's something that's that we've
always done as a family, and I think it really
is something that has seen us all through because, quite frankly,
when you don't know what's going to happen next, you
do have to have that faith, and you have to
ask God to show you the right path and to
ensure that the light shines in all the dark places.
And I'll tell you what he has. He has already
started shining light in a lot of dark places. And
I actually believe over the next i want to say,
six months to a year, you're going to see a
lot of light shone in a lot of places that
probably have needed it for a long time. And I'm
personally very excited about all of that.
Speaker 1: I think the vast majority of America is too, even
some of those on the left, if you ask them
and they give you an honest answer. I don't want
to be labor the point, but it's something that I
felt during the week of the Republican National Convention. I
was there in Milwaukee. I saw your father in law
walk in, just like everybody else, but you know, there
I was near the convention floor and watching this man
with the bandaged ear. You know again, you could feel
and I talked to the delegates. I talked to so
many the thousands of people who were there, so many
of them, and they all had the same feeling that
there was something bigger than all of us in Pennsylvania
that day, and it carried right through into that convention.
You were there, or take me to that time period
for you and for the Trump family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if you recall, the Monday of that convention
was just forty eight hours after the incident in Butler. Yeah,
and you know, truthfully, my father in law wasn't planning
to come to the convention until probably Wednesday, is what
he had told all of us at the RNC. He
was originally planning, And so it was sort of incredible.
I'll tell you. One of the things that impressed me
so much was that we, of course, as a family,
watched this happen in real time, this assassination attempt. Eric
and I had the TV on at our house. I
was actually getting dinner ready for my kids, and I
looked up one moment because my daughter goes, oh, look
who's on TV. It's Grandpa. And I looked down. I
was peeling a carrot, and when I looked up again,
he was no longer in front of the podium and
I looked and I saw him on the ground, and
I knew immediately something was wrong. And my husband was
in the other room with the TV on started calling
me in there. I hold onto that carrot and that
peeler for about forty five minutes before I realized it
was in my hand. Was obviously yeah, I was in
such shock. He called us about I'm going to say
it was like two hours after this all happened. He
was in the hospital. They were treating him there, and
you know, that was the first time we I think
breathed a sigh of relief because you just don't know.
You know, people can tell you all the ground, oh
everything's fine. Somebody initially told us he had a bloody
nose or something, and I said, I don't think that's right.
You could tell there was something much bigger at play.
And so when we spoke to him, immediately, I knew
he was okay because he started, you know, kind of
being a little joking, and that's his personality. He loves
to joke. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met.
But he said when we talked to him a couple
hours later that he was planning to go the next
day and fly to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the convention on Sunday.
And I said, Wow, this man has just survived a
near death experience and he is going to go earlier
than anticipated to Wisconsin for the convention. And so of
course we scrambled around the R and C. We Toltdal
the whole team of the convention. You guys have to
get ready because he's coming early. And so obviously we
as a family felt a certain way. But I think
I share the same sentiments as every person who happened
to be in that arena the night when he walked in.
I mean, it was incredibly emotional, and I remember the
look on his face. He was emotional. And I've known
Donald Trump for sixteen years. I have but a handful
of times seen him look like he looked when he
walked in that convention hall, and it was incredible. The
emotion in that room was so powerful, and I think
we all felt lt that there was a much bigger
presence than just those of us here on earth that
was there with us in that arena in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
that night. I get chills actually right now talking to
you about it, because it was really powerful.
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Speaker 1: No doubt about it. And I'll tell you when I
first saw him on the monitors at the pfifser for
him in Milwaukee, what I saw was a guy who
understood the moment, who felt the moment, was living the moment,
understood the moment. I saw a prize fighter walking into
the ring, and I thought, look out, Jake.
Speaker 2: Paul, look out. They should have sucked Donald Trump and
for Mike Tyson. As it turns out, I think so.
Speaker 1: I think that would have been a better battle. But
he carried that. Of course, there were a lot of
people I talked to in conservative grassroots circles and they
told me they said, Matt that moment, and Butler carried
into the GOP convention that time has just sealed the deal.
Donald Trump will be the forty seventh president of the
United States. Did you think that at that point as
co chair of the it's Hardial Committee. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's hard as co chair because I can't take anything
for granted. And I never wanted to. You know, I
wasn't going to be the Trump who people look back
and they said, well, she's the one who lost the
election because she got too confident, or they thought that
they had enough lawyers, or they didn't need to watch
something over here. But I felt it too, because I
was getting information from so many people who would say,
I just talked to a friend of mine, this is
a person who is not a Trump fan, and they
just said, I'm absolutely voting for this man. You know,
it's more than that he just survived. It's that in
the moment, whenever you are you can really tell the
character of a person and what they're made of, whenever
they're in the heat of a moment like that. His
instinct was not for himself, it was for the rest
of us. He got up on that stage, raised his
fist and yelled fight, fight, fight, not for himself, but
because he looked in the eyes of the people. As
he laid on the ground there while they were trying
to contain this shooter. He looked in their eyes and
he said, oh, my gosh, these people think that I'm
going to die. They think that I've been gravely wounded here.
And for them, for the people watching at home, for
our allies around the world who are watching this, think
about how this would have changed our country forever. He said,
I got to get up and I have to let
them know I'm okay. And it was just an instinct
and for so many people who really, over the past
four years have just been really horrified by the weakness
that the American the administration of Joe Biden has exuded
for the United States of America, it's so refreshing to
see somebody get up and be strong and stand firm
and tell you that he's okay. And I think that
that really did change a lot for a lot of people.
I think it's something that probably made the Democrats very
nervous to see that Donald Trump had that instinct to
do that. I'm going to argue that it's probably the
reason that they after that debate, of course, and then
coupled with this incident, they said, well, we got to
get Joe Biden out of here. That's it. But yeah,
I think it did change the way that I thought
about it personally. Then again, I couldn't I couldn't count
on that as the R and C coachair. I had
to always assume we were, you know, forty points behind,
and we got to play every second of the game
until it's done.
Speaker 1: Oh you sure did that. And I want to get
into that in just a moment. But just to put
a finer point on all of this, even Mark Zuckerberg,
who spent a lot of time and a lot of
money trying to beat Donald Trump in twenty twenty, certainly
suppressed a lot of conservative speech supporters of Donald Trump
for a good long period of time. You know, quite frankly,
I think there's a lot of that's still going on today.
Even he said, when Donald Trump got up on that
stage and you'll fight, fight, fight, he said, now, that's badass.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and a lot of people agree with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do as well, And you're right, I
think that was an image that will forever be in
the minds of Americans. Speaking of your work and what
the Republican National Committee did this year, it was a
historic year of success. And as I covered it at
the Federalist, in my colleagues on the elections team, what
we saw was first and foremost a party working with
conservative grassroots organizations that was very committed to going all in.
And that began with something that I think was absolutely essential.
And you were at the center of that. That was
to convince your father in law that absentee early voting
was absolutely essential when he had no reason to have
any faith in that. After twenty twenty, How did you
do that?
Speaker 2: Well, I'd like to take all the credit for but
I certainly cannot. I think, Look, it was it was
a process, and I think coming out of twenty twenty,
Donald Trump, probably more so than anyone, was very upset
obviously about the result and attributed a lot of that
to the mail in ballots. Now you look at twenty twenty,
that was a very different election. There were election laws
that were changed illegally in so many states, there was
mail ballot usage like we'd never seen before, and of
course all of it was due to COVID nineteen. That said,
you know, whenever you kind of step back and you
look at the way we conduct elections in the United states,
I will say they're not perfect. In my perfect world,
we would have one day of voting, we would have
voter ide all across the country, and we would have
paper ballots. Maybe it's a federal holiday so everybody can
get a chance to be off of work and go vote.
But we don't have that system. And the truth is,
you have an election season now. So if we have
several weeks where the Democrats are able to gain such
a lead on us with the early vote, with the
mail and vote, and we're not capitalizing on that ourselves,
then we're basically going to lose. You know, it's going
to be a really tough delta to make up once
you get to election day, and that's a tough one
to overcome. So I think there were a lot of
us who were in his ear consistently reminding him of
that very fact and telling him that we also can't
be the ones who are saying, oh, well, you know
it's never been done that. We've done things like ballot harvesting,
and you know that's not a very Republican way to operate.
We've never done that. From the R and C. We said, no,
every legal avenue we have, we need to be using
in this election, including ballot harvesting everywhere it's legal, making
sure that we are capitalizing on that early vote, the
mail in vote, and so we finally all I think
after hearing from us ad nauseum, probably so many of us,
I think he started to really understand and appreciate it.
And one of the ways I think that he truly
was convinced was when we talked about and I talked
about this a lot to ensure that people understood out
there who were going to go out and vote why
they needed to go vote early. Whenever we said, listen,
we are able to see whenever somebody goes and votes,
whenever your vote is cast and you have actually completed
the process, then we can take those people off of
our list. We don't need to spend any money or
resources to turn them out to vote anymore. We can
then apply our money in a better way, which is
to go after the low propensity voters convince these people
to come out and vote. We want the people we
know are our steady base to get out and vote early,
and let's let us use that time and money that
we have in the lead up to election day to
get the low propensity voters out, then you really do
swamp the vote, then you really do make it too
big to rig. And I think after you know, hearing
this time after time, he started to appreciate that, and
I do think it was one of the reasons that
we were incredibly successful in this election. But the second
he put a post up that said voting on election day,
voting by mail, or voting early in person are all
great ways to vote, I said, well, that's it. We
have our directive from the guy at the top, and
we can take that out to our electorate and convince
them as well. And that's exactly what we tried to do.
Speaker 1: Indeed, our guest today is Laura Trump, daughter in law
of President Donald Trump, former co chair of the Republican
National Committee, and musician extraordinaire. Glad to have her. Delighted
to have her on this edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
I did a lot of reporting on low propensity voters.
That's a term that a lot of Americans may not
be familiar with. It means that these are voters who rarely,
if at all, vote, and the RNC groups like the
Sentinel Action Fund and there were others along the way.
But I remember talking to these organizations how committed they were.
They had the resources to do it, but they really
really reached out to these lower turnout voters and that
made a huge difference, particularly in the swing states. How
long had you been talking about this in talking to
some of the grassroots organizations on this front. It's something
that they saw to full effect in twenty twenty two
in the state of Florida, and they saw it work
there they thought they could take the plan nationally. How
long have you been talking about this process?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean to be honest, I fully started talking
about it once I took the position of co chair,
which was in March of this past year, and we
knew there wasn't a lot of time. Michael Wattley and
I whenever we took our positions as chair and co chair,
we said, you know, we really have eight months until
the most critical and consequential election of our lifetime. There's
a lot of work to do. And one of the
things that I thought was important, you know, you talk
about the grassroots, and I don't think you can overstate
how big a role the grassroots played in this election.
People like Scott Presler, his group is called Early Vote action.
You know, traditionally, the R and C had been very
hesitant to reach out to a lot of these people,
and having just you know, been there since March myself,
I don't really know why, but I know that I
had been. I'd had many conversations with Scott Presler, and
I thought that he had the exact same ideas that
we did at the R and C. And we can't
do it all alone, you know. We need people like
Turning Point, we need early vote action, we need all
of these grassroots organisations to assist us. And we did
have an FEC ruling that allowed us to coordinate slightly
more closely with those groups this election versus previous elections,
and we use that to our advantage. So in every
legal way we could, we said we're going to coordinate,
We're going to partner with these people. And I think
it was on my second week, maybe my first week
at the RNC, that I brought Scott Presler in and
we sat down and we talked about our plan and
our strategy. And I really cannot again overstate how big
a role all these groups played, because look, the R
and C can't be everywhere all the time. And I
think that that was part of the problem. Previously, the
R and C tried to be too many things all
the time to too many people, and Michael Wattley and
I said, we are going to have to pare it
down and we're going to have to focus on three things,
having a world class convention, which I believe we did.
One of the reasons why is because Donald Trump showed
up on Monday. Making sure that we get out the
vote and making sure that we protect the ballot. Those
were the three things we wanted to work on. And
having partners out there who were working in line with
us and on the same page with us was so
instrumental in this win. And so I mean, I think
I would say from day one, you know, Chairman Wattley
and I understood that this was what we're going to
have to do, and we hit the ground running, and
we took, you know, no time to dilly dally. We
got things done, and obviously we're very proud of the result.
Speaker 1: And the result has been a clear success. Up and
down the line. You know, you get not only the
election of Donald Trump to the to be the forty
seventh President of the United States. As I like to say, Laura,
he Grover, did it. He's the twenty first century Glover Cleveland.
Of course, yes, But not only do you have that,
you have now return of republic control of the Senate.
You have maintained control, although razor thin margin, that's for sure,
Republicans in the House. So this, this provides an excellent opportunity.
And it all happened with the r n C again,
as you mentioned, working with these grassroots organizations. It's funny
because that that change of of law, if you will,
election law was something that the Democrats had had pushed
for the likes of Mark Elias. They're they're lamenting that decision.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure mark Elias specifically, yes, very much so probably,
but you know what that was. It's funny because I
hear a lot of knocks of the you know, the
former team at the r n C. And I will
never be in the business of doing that because I
can only comment on what I've done while I've been there. Sure,
and obviously we're proud of it all. But you know,
it's funny because because I think sometimes getting fresh eyes
on things is great, it's a good thing, and we
certainly we certainly did things differently than they'd done in
the past, and I think that things will continue to
function differently at the RNC. I think we learned a
lot of hard lessons in twenty twenty and we tried
to apply those hard lessons and learn from them in
this past election. And you know, the Democrats certainly are
probably very upset about things. Unfortunately for them, Matt, I
don't know that they learned very much. We'll see as
we head forward.
Speaker 1: I'm so sad they're upset about things.
Speaker 2: Oh it's such a shame, it.
Speaker 1: Really is, you know. But you're the model now what
you're able to accomplish, you know. I hear it. I've
heard ad nauseam, and there was a good deal of
truth of it that, you know, the leftist in America
for elections were setting the model on how to win
elections because they were they where you said it before.
You got to play the game as it is, not
as how you want it to be, so you got
to be realistic about it. But I talked to Matt
batesl over at American Majority the other day. They're using
this model and they were doing the low propensity stuff
as well, but they're using that model as they quickly
turn around and have in the state of Wisconsin and
are looking at a very important Supreme Court election there
that will determine whether leftist or conservatives control that court.
So this is the model moving forward. What the other
area that you mentioned that was a huge accomplishment and
I think really set some people's some voters' minds at ease,
and that was you had a team of people committed
to making sure that the kind of leftist law fare
that was pushed in twenty twenty had an answer, and
a very powerful answer at that with your election Integrity team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was one of the big pillar of
what we did. Look, it was important that we go
really above and beyond anything that we even thought was
necessary for a couple of reasons. There were so many
people coming out of twenty twenty who just didn't trust
our electoral process. And everywhere I went I would hear
the same thing. People would say, you know, we feel
like Donald Trump is going to win, we feel like
there's so much great momentum behind him, but aren't they
going to cheat? How do you stop them from cheating?
And it was something every single time I traveled somewhere
I would hear And so we had to do it
so that not only if there was any cheating we
would stop it. We could help hold people accountable who
were doing things that may have been nefarious, but we
also had to make sure that it was worth people's
time to come out and vote. It was worth people's
time in Butler County, Pennsylvania to come out and stand
in line, some of them for six hours to vote
in this election. If you don't think your vote is
going to matter, or your vote's going to count, then
you're not going to go take your time away from
your family, your busy schedule, your job, whatever it is,
to go stand in line and cast your vote in
an election. So we started this process by saying, Okay,
we're going to recruit a bunch of volunteers. We're going
to put a very lofty goal of one hundred thousand
volunteers that we're going to try to recruit to be
pole watchers, poll workers, and legal experts to have in
every swing state across the country in all the major
polling locations, to ensure that if anything goes wrong, we've
taught them what they need to do, and we can
attack and deal with problems as they happen, not wait days,
weeks or months later we saw it happen in twenty twenty.
We thought one hundred thousand people was a lot to
kind of put out there into the universe. We at
the end of this Matt recruited two hundred and thirty
thousand people to be pole watchers and poll workers and
sixty five hundred attorneys across the country, and we dealt
with somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand different issues
starting on the first day of early voting all the
way through the last vote being tallied on election night.
So obviously it worked in terms of encouraging people to
come out and vote because they thought that we were
watching things, and then as they were happening anything anywhere,
it could be the most obscure machine in an obscure
county that we're not worried about in the middle of Kentucky.
But I wanted to make sure that we were talking
and communicating with the American people, and so any issue
we dealt with, if we saw it on X and
people were talking to us about it, Michael Wattley and
I were responding, we had our team on it. We
had people check it out, and we made sure that
we updated people in real time as it was happening,
and clearly it was something that I think we had
to do, and I don't think we can take our
foot off the gas on this. You know, you're going
to have a midterm coming up in twenty six, another
presidential election in twenty eight, and unfortunately, I think we're
going to have to continue operating this way unless there's
some major sweeping change to our electoral process, because this
was what was necessary in order to confirm and convince
people that there was no funny business in this election.
Speaker 4: Cutting the deficit seems simple, It's just not easy. The
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Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the Federalist editor in chief that wrote
the book, literally wrote the book on what happened in
twenty twenty, the rigged twenty twenty election. And you know,
we we can disagree on just how deep the rigging went,
but there's no doubt about there were shenanigans played, there
were laws broken. I reported on that in Wisconsin and
Michigan and some other swing states. We know what happened.
But now take a look at this, Laura, take a
look at the Pew Research Center, certainly not a bastion
of conservative thought. They put together a survey where they
spoke to I believe it was somewhere around ten thousand
voters after the election. Ninety five percent of those voters
believe that the elections in their communities were administered and
handled well. Eighty eight percent believe that way Nationally. What
a difference four years and a lot of people make huh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's actually the first I've heard of those numbers,
and it certainly makes me proud is RTC co chair,
to hear those numbers. And it's not because, by the way,
the Democrats did anything. Do you know, the entire the
entire time that Michael Wattley and I were chairing co chair.
We continued to reach out to the DNC and say,
if you guys want to join us in our pursuit
of election integrity, we would love to have you come
join us in this because we didn't just do it
for Republicans, we did it for all Americans. Because I
don't care if you're voting Republican, Democrat, or third party candidate,
if you are voting in the United States of America,
you should feel like when you go vote in our elections,
your vote matters, in your vote counts. And we're still
waiting how many two months nearly after the election, to
hear back from the DNC folks. So it was, you know,
they did not want to participate in this. I wonder why,
but I guess we'll have to hold our breath on
an answer.
Speaker 1: Well, you've been very generous through time. Just a few
more minutes, but I do want to ask you this
because you are not just the RNC co chair all
of the things that we talked about, obviously, a member
of one of the most well known political families of
all time. You're a mom and so I wanted to
talk to you about what it means this election and
your estimation what it means to turn the page on
the last four years in this country. As a mom,
I like.
Speaker 2: That you used the term that the Democrats tried to
coin turn the page.
Speaker 1: They try to.
Speaker 2: Convince us all that we were going to somehow turn
the page with Kamala Harris, but.
Speaker 1: With the incumbents. That was our rich argument.
Speaker 2: Yes, amazing. I wonder why it didn't work out. Okay, Yeah, listen,
this was my number one driver being a mom. You know,
when I was asked by my father in law to
consider being co chair of the RNC, I initially told
him that I didn't think this was something I wanted
to do. I knew the gravity of this election. I
knew how much I would have to invest in myself
in order to do this job successfully. I knew what
that would mean for my kids as well, that I
would have to spend a lot of time away from home,
a lot of time on the road. I've been through
two or I had been now it's three, but I
had been through two previous presidential elections before, so I
know what those are like. And you know my kids
now are five and seven. There were four and six
when I took the role of coach here, but it
was actually because of them. It was the night after
my father in law called and asked me if I
would do this, that I was putting them in bed,
and I really looked at my kids and I said,
my gosh, I could never look at myself in the
mirror and know that I could have done something to
make sure this election turns out the right way, and
I didn't, because this is about these kids. It's never
been about me. It's also never been about Donald Trump.
And honestly, Matt, it's not even about you. This is
about the future of this country. And I think so
many of us have felt that that the same America
that I got to grow up in, you got to
grow up in, is the same America my kids and
my grandkids one day deserve to grow up in as well.
And it felt very much to so many of us
like if this election had gone the wrong way, that
America would cease to exist. And so, I mean, this
was the whole reason that I decided to take this position.
It's the whole reason that I worked as hard as
I did. And so I think that there's such a
sense of relief for so many of us out there.
And I'll tell you it's not just in America. I've
had the opportunity to travel to several different countries since
the election, and everywhere I have gone South America, some
in the Middle East, people are so relieved and are saying, Wow,
we can finally breathe again, because everyone in the world
understands that when America is strong, it means the world
is stabilized. When America operates from a place of strength,
it means that things are better. We don't have wars
breaking out around the world, that things are going to
be better for everyone. And so I just am so
hopeful and I have so much I'm I'm just grateful
that the people of this country voted the way that
they did, and I'm grateful that it feels like this
country got another chance, because I really feel like we did.
And I'm incredibly optimistic about the next four years. I
think DOJE is going to be something that is going
to provide probably the most transformational period of our history
save for the inception of America. I think what Elon
Musk and a Viak Ramaswami plan to do, and by
the way, less than two years they say they'll be
done with this. I think that is so exciting, so
necessary for the future of this country. And I really
believe that Donald Trump is going to go down as
one of the most popular presidents in American history as
he exits office in his second term, because I think
people are starting to see the Donald Trump they were
sold is maybe not not completely accurate, and I think
what he's going to be able to do for this
country is going to be absolutely incredible. And I'm just
honored that I got to play a small role in it,
and to have a front row seat to history is
just the honor of a lifetime. And as a girl
who grew up in a fairly normal, middle class family
in North Carolina, I can tell you this has been
quite a ride. I'm honored and I'm humbled every single day,
and it's all about the kids, and I'm grateful that
our country gets another chance to be great once again.
Speaker 1: Well I can tell you this that the American people
were definitely sold a bad bill of goods in twenty nineteen.
In twenty twenty, with Joe Biden, perhaps it took a
catastrophic debate on the part of Joe Biden to wake
the rest of America up. But my goodness, they were
definitely sold the wrong information, a false narrative on your
father in law. And I absolutely agree with you. I
think Americans have awakened to that, and that's why you
have the results in many ways of the November election
that you do. And I also agree that this election
was absolutely about the future, no doubt about it. It
was about our kids. But I'm going to be a
little selfish. I'm going to say it was about me
and this generation to this present time, because I think
we want our country back, and I believe that's what
this election ultimately is all about for Donald Trump, is
it not?
Speaker 2: Oh one hundred percent? This was the moment I think
that it really felt like things would never be the same,
and they were very quickly heading in a direction that
really didn't feel like we could ever come back from
it and overcome the challenges that we would face from
this current administration. And if again things have gone the
other way, I don't know that we have been able
to call ourselves in the United States for much longer.
And yeah, the people of this country just want their
country back. They want to feel safe in their communities.
They want to have a closed border, they want their
money to go farther, they want to be able to
buy American goods, they want to be energy independent again.
They don't want our young men and women being sent
overseas to fight in senseless wars. They want common sense back.
And I think that that's the real overarching theme of
this entire election is common sense. And you know, when
you have one person talking about the things I just
talked about and saying I did this one time before,
I know I can do it again, and the other
person really giving you no examples as to how she
would make things different or do anything differently from the
current administration. I think it's common sense has to rule
and has to dictate. And certainly all of the things
that I just said are number one priorities, top goal
of my father in laws, and I think in the
first hundred days you're going to see a lot of
those things accomplished. He's going to focus on the border.
He's going to make sure we're energy independent and that
energy export very soon. He's going to make sure that
these wars are settled around the world. It's not good
for anyone to have these going on. And a lot
of it's already been. He's already given himself so much
runway leading into January twentieth, so that when he hits
his feet hit the floor of the Oval office in
the afternoon of January twentieth, he's going to be ready
to go. And you know, I think that common sense
is what had to rule in this election, And man,
am I glad it finally did. I was kind of
worried if we didn't have much common sense left mat
I don't know, but the people came through in this country,
and God bless him for doing it.
Speaker 1: We said, let's have a return to competence first, yes, foremost,
and how about a guy with a vision for the
future that isn't all about lining his pockets quite frankly,
But that's a discussion perhaps different times. So let us
close our conversation, Laura, if you would please join together
now with the theme the mission Statement of the forty
seventh President's next term in office. And we do it
like this, No I back down, nome go you do it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you can stand me up at the gates
of hell, but walm back down.
Speaker 1: Oh I love it. I love it. Ties it all together,
Thank you so much for joining us. It's been an
absolute delight pleasure to meet you and all of my travels.
We have not met, but you have a standing invitation
to join us on the Federalist Radio Hour anytime.
Speaker 2: Okay, I appreciate it very much. Thank you so much
for the great support, the kind words, and onward and
upward to making America gradian. That's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, God bless you in those thank you. Thanks to
my guest today, Laura Trump. You've been listening to another
edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior
Elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the
frame