Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and a 2020 campaign adviser, denied knowledge Thursday of his hatching any plan to be somehow reinstated as president amid reports of such conversations.
“As far as I know, there are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August. Maybe there’s something I don’t know,” Mrs. Trump said on Fox News, where she works as a paid contributor.
“I think that that is a lot of folks getting a little worked up about something just because maybe there wasn’t enough pushback, you know, from the Republican side,” added Mrs. Trump, who is married to the former president’s son Eric.
“So no, I have not heard any plans for Donald Trump to be installed in the White House in August,” she said.
Maggie Haberman, a White House reporter for the New York Times, said this week that Mr. Trump “has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.”
Mr. Trump has been “laser focused” on efforts in certain states to audit the 2020 election, Ms. Haberman said on Twitter, seven months since losing to President Biden.
Charles C. W. Cooke, a senior writer for the conservative National Review magazine, has since reported that his own sources are saying that Mr. Trump believes he will be “reinstated” as president.
“I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally – will be ’reinstated’ to office this summer after ’audits’ of the 2020 elections in Arizona, Georgia and a handful of other states have been completed,” Mr. Cooke wrote in an article published later Thursday.
“I can attest, too, that Trump is trying hard to recruit journalists, politicians, and other influential figures to promulgate this belief — not as a fundraising tool or an infantile bit of trolling or a trial balloon, but as a fact,” Mr. Cooke wrote for the National Review.
Mr. Trump has disputed the legitimacy of the 2020 election since before it ended. He insisted in the months prior to polls closing that it would be “rigged” race if he is not declared its winner, and he subsequently denied losing to Mr. Biden and continues to maintain the contest was “stolen.”
No credible evidence has emerged to corroborate his claims, however, and federal officials for his own administration have asserted the election was the most secure ever.
Ms. Haberman made the Twitter posting in response to another tweet on the platform about former Trump adviser Michael T. Flynn having recently discussed a potential coup occurring in the U.S.
Mr. Flynn, a retired Army general and Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, seemed to say during an event last month that a coup “should happen here.” He has since denied calling for one.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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