Lara Trump Rails Against RNC Spending as Donald Uses Money for Melania Hair

Lara Trump railed against the Republican National Committee's spending, saying she would only use donations on getting Republicans elected, even as her father-in-law, former President Donald Trump, continues to use his campaign donations to pay his wife's hairstylist and his ballooning legal fees.

Lara, married to Trump's son, Eric, addressed the former president's support for her as the next co-chair of the RNC during her speech at this year's annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), calling it "a position for which I never imagined I would run, but I also never imagined that our country would be in such dire straits."

"If elected as co-chair of the RNC, I can promise you we will not be giving blank checks to career political consultants and vendors," Lara said on Thursday. "Every penny of every dollar donated will go towards one thing: winning."

Her comments seem to come at odds with the statement she made just days earlier when she told reporters at the Trump campaign headquarters in South Carolina that paying her father-in-law's legal bills is "absolutely" of interest to GOP voters.

"That's why people are furious right now. And they see the attacks against him. They feel like it's an attack not just on Donald Trump but on this country," she said. "So yeah, I think that is a big interest to people, absolutely."

Lara's remarks on how she would spend Republican donor funds also clash with her father-in-law's donor spending habits.

Federal Election Commission filings show that since the start of 2022, Donald Trump's Save America leadership political action committee (PAC) paid Melania Trump's hairstylist, Herve Pierre Braillard, more than $260,000 in "consulting fees."

The PAC has also been the major vehicle for paying the former president's legal fees. A Business Insider analysis found that Donald Trump spent more than $52 million of his PAC funds on legal fees last year, with nearly $40 million being spent to pay law firms working on cases unrelated to his 2024 candidacy. In January alone, the committee spent nearly $2.9 million on legal expenses.

The former president endorsed his daughter-in-law and North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley to lead the RNC last week after incumbent chairwoman Ronna McDaniel offered to step down after losing Donald Trump's support.

On Thursday, Lara also broke with her father-in-law on early voting, imploring GOP voters to cast their ballots early in order to avoid having to play "catch up on Election Day." Although the former president has occasionally encouraged Republicans to vote early, he had blamed those methods for his 2020 loss.

"We got to adapt a little. As Republicans, I get it, we like to go vote on Election Day. It's exciting to be a part of that day. It's exciting to fill out the ballot for the future leader of our country," Lara said at CPAC. "But the truth is, if we want to compete with the Democrats, we cannot wait until Election Day. If we want to compete and win, we must embrace early voting."

"The days of waiting until Election Day to vote are over. We have to encourage everyone who can legally vote to go do so as soon as they legally can," she added. "We need so many votes banked for Donald J. Trump that we're not playing catch-up on Election Day."