Is this woman, who 'baked a cake in the shape of a Kalashnikov' for Trump's son, Donald's secret weapon in his fight to regain the White House?

Behind every great man is a great woman, as the saying goes. In the case of Donald Trump, however, the situation is not quite as clear-cut as the aphorism would have it.

During his presidency, on one side there was, of course, his wife, the beautiful former model Melania, who had something of a tempestuous reign as First Lady. (Who can forget her headline-grabbing coat emblazoned with the words ‘I really don’t care’ worn while visiting the U.S.-Mexican border?)

On the other was Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, the icy blonde who, along with her husband Jared Kushner, became a prominent — and controversial — adviser to her father’s administration.

It was said by some that the two women didn’t get along. There were reports claiming that Melania dubbed Ivanka ‘Princess’, and referred to her and her husband as ‘snakes’ — and that her team even devised a seating plan to ensure Ivanka could not be seen by photographers at Trump’s inauguration.

The Donald could make it back into the White House later this year — something which seems to be inching closer after he soundly defeated opponent Nikki Haley for the Republican candidacy in her home state of South Carolina at the weekend. Haley, last night vowed to fight on.

Lara Trump with Donald Trump

Lara in that ‘tacky’ New Year’s Eve dress with Eric

But if he does triumph, which of the Trump women will be standing victoriously at his side?

Melania has signalled she supports her 77-year-old husband’s latest bid for the White House but, following an absence to mourn her mother’s death, has so far been seen at only one event in Mar-a-Lago.

A source recently told the New York Post’s Page Six that, after the 53-year-old’s self-assured appearance at the funeral of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter: ‘Melania realises it’s her time to join the ranks of historic First Ladies and leave her mark on history . . . She feels better prepared for her potential role the second time around’.

Ivanka, though, is another story: having removed herself from the political fray, the 42‑year-old has instead settled into a new glitzy life as a socialite in Florida and shows zero desire to return to Washington.

So who, then, will fill the vacuum left behind by Ivanka?

Step forward Lara Trump, the wife of Trump’s second son, Eric, who has made an unlikely ascent into the former President’s affections and is seen as a natural successor to Ivanka.

Last week the feisty, ambitious blonde stepped further into the political spotlight after her father-in-law endorsed her to become the co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

‘Lara is an extremely talented communicator and is dedicated to all that MAGA [Make America Great Again] stands for,’ gushed Trump. ‘She has told me she wants to accept this challenge and would be great!’

Certainly the 41-year-old mother of two is no stranger to politics. She worked for her father-in-law’s 2016 presidential campaign, and spearheaded the Trump-Pence Women’s Empowerment tour to try to galvanise female voters in the wake of some of Trump’s lewd and sexist remarks.

She hosted and produced the pro-Trump podcast Real News Update during the Trump administration, returned as a top adviser for her father-in-law’s 2020 bid for re-election and in 2021 was a Fox News contributor, but exited that role once her father-in-law announced he was running again.

‘Lara will do much of what Ivanka brought to the Trump campaign, but there will be some differences,’ says Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the RNC. 

‘Ivanka would try to put a nicer face on some of Trump’s rhetoric, but Lara doesn’t do that. She punches hard — just like Trump does. And it’s one of the reasons she’s in the role that she’s in.’

Born in 1982, Lara and her younger brother, Kyle, were brought up by their parents, Robert and Linda Yunaska, in an ocean-front home in Wrightsville Beach, a wealthy beach community in North Carolina.

Mr Yunaska owned a yacht-building company, and the family were staunch Republicans.

Trump with Lara, left, Tiffany and Ivanka at Buckingham Palace 

Trump's wife Melania has signalled she supports her 77-year-old husband’s latest bid for the White House 

After graduating from Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, Lara graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and media from North Carolina State University. 

A fitness fanatic, she became a personal trainer and flirted with a sports broadcasting career before studying pastry arts at the French Culinary Institute in New York.

She briefly launched a cake-making business called Lara Lea Confections, in which she made birthday cakes shaped like Chanel handbags or Christian Louboutin shoes. She reportedly made a cake representing an AK-47 rifle for her then boyfriend Eric’s birthday, but has since removed the picture of it from the internet.

She met her future husband in 2008, noticing him across a crowded room because he was taller than her 5ft 11in.

‘I wish it was some lovely, silly scenario but we just happened to be out at the same time and in the same place in New York,’ Lara told her local newspaper. She said she didn’t find out his last name until after she’d left with friends that night, and it took three months for them to schedule a first date.

She claimed she was nervous when she met her future father-in-law at an event at the U.S. Open several months later, but said Trump calmed her nerves by buying her an ice cream.

‘It was so normal it just blew my mind,’ she told a crowd of women in 2016, adding that the Trumps were ‘one of the best families I’ve ever met in my life’.

Trump was not an immediate fan of Lara’s, however, according to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and now a forceful critic of the former President. ‘He didn’t want Eric to marry her. He had found somebody else at the Trump Organisation that he wanted Eric to marry,’ Cohen told podcast host Ben Meiselas.

‘And, of course, not only did Donald make fun of her looks but so, of course, did [eldest son] Donald Jnr and Ivanka. They all made fun of her looks. They just didn’t like her at all.’

From 2012 to 2016, Lara worked as a story co-ordinator at the tabloid TV news programme Inside Edition, and after a six-year courtship, she and Eric finally became engaged.

He proposed in the middle of a field at the 15-bedroom Trump Seven Springs Estate in Bedford, Connecticut, which the Trumps use as a family retreat.

While on a walk with the couple’s beagle, Charlie, he produced champagne and proposed with a platinum and diamond ring from his sister’s Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry Collection. Presumably he got a discount. 

On the couple’s wedding site, Lara described herself as a ‘Southern girl . . . breaking news guru and baker extraordinaire’, while Eric joked that he was ‘born into a relatively unknown New York family’. 

The couple married in 2014 under a canopy of roses and dangling crystals at Mar‑a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in a lavish ceremony attended by 400 guests.

Lara wore two different Vera Wang dresses and the couple cut a six-tiered pink wedding cake before heading off on honeymoon. In 2017, their son, Eric — known as Luke — was born and their daughter, Carolina, arrived in 2019.

Lara is already playing a significant role in her father-in-law’s campaign for the Republican nomination, but political observers were surprised when he nominated her to the RNC.

‘This is about Trump installing his own people — something every politician likes to do, but Trump takes loyalism to unprecedented levels,’ says Heye.

‘Lara has turned herself into a conservative media figure, and she’s going to be on TV pushing for her father-in-law and on the road stumping for him and for candidates. She’s good at that and she’s popular among base Republicans. She’ll get the cheers from the crowds.’

With her perfectly coiffed hair, pillow lips, false eyelashes and trim figure dressed in business attire, it’s clear the stylish Lara relishes the political spotlight, revving up Trump supporters and blowing them kisses after she has finished a speech. 

She recently admitted that she says the Pledge of Allegiance, America’s patriotic verse, with her children every night.

But she is already a controversial figure. She mocked Joe Biden’s stutter in 2020, and in 2023 railed against migrants crossing the border and ‘flooding’ the American education system with Spanish speakers. ‘We speak English here,’ she insisted.

She has called herself ‘a crazy dog lady’ and is a supporter of animal charities, but has failed to call out her husband Eric publicly for his love of big-game hunting.

She riled many Republicans two weeks ago when she disclosed that if she is elected to the RNC, ‘every single penny will go to the number one and only job of the RNC: that is electing Donald Trump as President of the United States and saving this country’.

Social media blew up with claims that Lara wanted the RNC to help pay Trump’s legal bills and make it his ‘personal slush fund’.

In a scorching retort, Michael Steele, a former chair of the RNC, said Lara had given ‘the wrong answer’, and that the RNC’s job was to support the entire party and every Republican candidate, not just one.

There have been social gaffes, too. Lara landed in hot water in 2022 when she posted a video of her then five-year-old son out in his toy car during Hurricane Ian in Florida. Although the little boy clearly didn’t enjoy the experience, his mother said that it was ‘character-building’.

The super-fit Lara, who runs marathons and triathlons, was lambasted for wearing a risqué waist-high-split dress at the 2023 New Year’s Eve bash at Mar-a-Lago, with some critics saying it was ‘tacky’.

And she was mocked last year for recording her own, decidedly bland version of the late rock musician Tom Petty’s song I Won’t Back Down, and singing it at Mar-a-Lago.

Petty’s family had already issued a cease-and-desist letter to her father-in-law for playing the song during a 2020 election campaign rally.

‘Trump was in no way authorised to use this song to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind,’ the Petty family said in a statement.

Unsurprisingly, Jill Hopman, chair of the New Hanover Democratic Party in Lara’s home state of North Carolina, is not a fan.

‘Nothing has seemed to work out for Lara in the past in the sense that she has temporary gigs and jumps from one thing to the next, so maybe this is another temporary gig to help her father-in-law,’ she says. ‘But it’s not in the best interests of the country and not in the best interests of the Republican Party.

‘I think the fact Ivanka and Jared have no interest in rejoining this campaign or administration and Melania has all but disappeared, Lara’s there by default, or desperation, or boredom.

‘I’m sure she’s an excellent fundraiser and an excellent surrogate for Donald Trump as an individual, but she does not have the political experience to lead the RNC.’

And what of Lara’s relationship with Melania, her husband’s stepmother? In a 2018 interview with Elle magazine, which called Lara ‘one of the most powerful women in the U.S.’, Lara said she respected Melania and described her an ‘intellectual’.

‘It’s got to be really isolating to be the First Lady, and I don’t think people ever really consider that,’ she added.

Asked about Melania’s controversial ‘I really don’t care’ jacket, Lara shrugged and said: ‘I’ve never asked her about that.’

Though the women are not close friends, sources say they are cordial and pleasant with each other, and Melania is happy to let Lara take some of the pressure off her on the campaign trail.

The celebrity daughter-in-law was doing just that last week, leaving husband Eric in charge of their two small children at their £2.5 million five-bedroom, seven-bathroom, Tuscan-inspired mansion at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, to stump for her father-in-law.

Introduced in Beaufort, South Carolina, by Congresswoman Nancy Mace as Trump’s ‘secret weapon’, Lara said in a fiery speech before supporters that the presidential race was a battle ‘between good and evil’.

She also controversially added that she thinks supporters will want to help Trump out with his legal bills.

‘Because Melania and Ivanka have withdrawn from the public eye, she’s the most prominent female face on the Trump campaign,’ says Doug Heye. ‘We’re going to be seeing a lot more of Lara in the run-up to the presidential election on November 5.’