Lara Trump revealed the unexpected reaction that her father-in-law, President Trump, had on the night he left the White House in 2021, in a “Pod Force One” episode released on Wednesday.
The Trump family was “in a place of despair” as they disembarked in Palm Beach, Fla., on a final Air Force One flight following the 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, she recalled to The Post’s Miranda Devine.
“It was very somber. It was an incredibly tough time for all of us, and I think it was an incredibly tough time for him,” said Lara Trump, who is married to first son Eric Trump.
“No one really had a lot to say,” she continued.
“He told all of us that he wanted to have dinner that night. And none of us really knew how that would go. And the first thing he did, before he even sat down at the dinner table, is he looked around at all of us and he goes, ‘Well, kids, I’ve got to do it again.’”
Lara Trump mentioned the moment to demonstrate how “perseverance” in the face of adversity is the secret to success.
“Any one of the things that he had against him, especially in the four years in between terms, would have been enough for one person to say, ‘You know what? That’s it. I’m out of this. I’m never going to do it again.’ But he never gave up,” she said.
“He continued to fight for what he wanted, but what he, I think, knew was right to do.”
Trump would go on to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris nearly four years after that dinner in a blowout, winning all seven of the major battleground states in the presidential contest.
He also fought in the courts leading up to the victory, having been criminally indicted twice for allegedly seeking to overturn the very 2020 election results that forced the family to retreat to Mar-a-Lago.
The once and future president was federally charged in Washington, DC, for one of those cases and Fulton County, Ga., for the second.
Two other indictments related to Trump’s alleged hoarding of classified documents, as well as “hush money” payments to an adult film star well before his first run for the Oval Office, were also filed.
He battled further civil cases in New York, including one that resulted in a $454 million judgment for inflating the value of his organization’s real estate empire.
And the former president was nearly felled by an assassin’s bullet twice in 2024: once when his ear was shot by a gunman while speaking at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., in July; and again, when another set up a sniper’s nest at the edge of his Palm Beach golf course two months after.
Trump still won back the Republican nomination for president despite the legal challenges — and cramped field of primary opponents in 2024.
Months before leaving office, he had been routed by Biden in a 306-232 final electoral tally, with the Democratic nominee securing six of the seven swing states.
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Fueled by Trump’s claims of the contest having been “rigged,” a mob of his supporters stalled certification of the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, when they breached the US Capitol building.
“He went through all of it and left Washington, DC, and hours later knew he was going to do it again,” Lara Trump said. “And I think that that’s the key. If you’re willing to work harder and you’re willing to fight more than anyone else for something, you’re going to be victorious.”
Trump’s 2016 campaign, Laura Trump noted, also began after a quiet dinner with the family in June 2015.
“He wanted to make sure that we understood what that meant, because he knew it wasn’t just about him,” she added.
“He said, ‘I want to do this, but it’s not just going to involve me. All of you will ultimately become a part of this, because we all know that’s how it goes.’”
Lara Trump also remembered her father-in-law saying, “I want you guys to know that if we do this right, they’re going to come after us.”
“If I do this, I want to do it right, and even if that means that I only got one term in office, that’s okay, as long as I’m doing the right thing and we’re making change that needs to happen in this country,” Trump was also recalled as saying before going on to defeat Hillary Clinton that year.
Asked whether she had political ambitions still of her own, Lara noted that she twice turned down an opportunity to run for US Senate in North Carolina, but she “would consider something” in the future “if the time is right.”
