The RNC’s Co-Chair Has Put Her Music Career on Hold to Serve Donald Trump (Her Father-in-Law)

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“Talking to that little girl riding on the Pegasus, tell her everything’s going to be all right/ Even when it’s getting hard in this hurricane life, you still gotta spread your wings and fly.” —Lara Trump, in her new single

The single is the second addition to Trump’s small catalog of music, which also includes a cover of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” that she released last fall. (Fun fact: Her father-in-law, former President Donald Trump, once played the song at a campaign event and was sent a cease-and-desist order from Petty’s estate.)

“Anything Is Possible” is a heavily autotuned, countryish pop ballad, but its lyrics are what have captured the most—if not exactly positive—attention. Mostly, it’s a bunch of well-trodden aphorisms, including “Don’t think, just jump,” “Have faith,” and “There’s darkness before the dawn.”

But the lines that begin the song are more, um, original; they contain fantastical imagery that traverses into unfamiliar territory: “Talking to that little girl riding on the Pegasus, tell her everything’s going to be all right/ Even when it’s getting hard in this hurricane life, you still gotta spread your wings and fly,” Trump croons.

We at Slate are not really sure what the mythological-creature metaphor is here. (It seems as if someone riding a horse with wings should be an inspirational figure or a young person on the rise, but then why would the person doing that need the reassuring help described in the line that follows? Art is, I suppose, subjective.) The hurricane could be a low-hanging comparison to the torrential trials and tribulations of going through life, especially if you marry into the Trump family—or it could be a swipe at those who criticized her for letting her son drive his toy car during a hurricane back in 2022. (She defended the video in which her son was crying as a “character building” moment.)

And, yes, the song might seem like a detour from her political ambitions. (Before her current gig running the Republican National Committee, she was an on-air contributor for Fox News; prior to her father-in-law’s presidency, she was a TV producer who dabbled in making custom cakes.)

But stylistically, the single fits a right-wing, countryesque mold. Not all country music is Republican-coded, of course, but the genre has for decades been entangled with American conservatism. See: country fans’ ire at the Chicks’ anti–Iraq war, Bush-era activism; Toby Keith’s jingoistic, pro-military hits; and the genre’s relationship with the NRA.

More recently, there was the overtly political Jason Aldean song “Try That in a Small Town,” which pulled news footage of counter-police protests for the music video and leveled a veiled threat at protesters, ostensibly in backlash to the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020. (“That shit might fly in the city, good luck/ Try that in a small town/ See how far ya make it down the road.”)

And most prominently, the release of Beyoncé’s latest album, Cowboy Carter, reignited conversations about who is considered a country artist—especially as the album was reportedly inspired in part by Beyoncé’s experience being harassed for performing at the Country Music Awards a few years back. Although Black people were formative to the creation of American country music, the backlash to Beyoncé’s performance illustrated the difficulty Black musicians face when it comes to acceptance within the genre.

All of which is to say: Lara Trump’s song positions herself stylistically within what many see as a conservative genre.

In an extremely nerdy counter-move, the Democratic National Committee unveiled a song in response to Trump’s, called “Party’s Falling Down,” that features lyrics including: “Oh Lara, Lara, what have you done?/ The party’s falling down, it’s no longer fun” and “Empty pockets, no money in sight/ Candidates struggling, it’s a losing fight.” (DNC Chair Jaime Harrison referred to it as a “summer party anthem.” Sure!)

Then, alas, the fun was seemingly over before it even started. Trump told Breitbart News: “My immediate focus over the next 8 months will be my new role at the RNC.” But, she added, “I look forward to a time when I can jump back into this space … unfortunately all my fans in the liberal media will have to wait a little longer.”

She seems to have discarded the wise-mentor persona she adopted for her single, swapping it instead for the voice promising vengeance against Donald Trump’s adversaries.

“He exposed a lot of people. So they have to do everything they can to keep him out of that White House, ’cause they know Donald Trump gets in for four more years, the jig is up for them. The gloves are off,” she said.

“It’s four years of scorched earth when Donald Trump retakes the White House.”