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Lara Trump mocked for saying she was attracted to first family because they were 'down to earth'

Ms Trump is the wife of Donald Trump's son, Eric

Graig Graziosi
Thursday 27 August 2020 22:08 BST
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Lara Trump misquotes Abraham Lincoln during RNC speech

Lara Trump - the wife of Donald Trump's son, Eric - spoke at the third night of the Republican National Convention, and described her husband's family as being "down to earth".

During her address, she recalled the first time she met the Trump family, and that during that first encounter "any preconceived notion I had of this family disappeared immediately".

"They were warm and caring, they were hard workers, and they were down to earth," she said.

Social media users were quick to point out that it is difficult to portray a family as grounded when they possess a golden toilet and have their name on a skyscraper in New York City.

"The guy who fashioned himself a throne in a room of gold is ... down to earth," one Twitter user wrote.

Tim O'Brien, a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion, shared the quote alongside a photo of Mr Trump and First Lady Melania Trump in a gilded room, sitting at – or, in the first lady's case, lying atop – a piano.

Ms Trump's speech also made waves when she misquoted President Abraham Lincoln.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves," she said, attributing the words to the 16th president.

The quote Ms Trump attempted to use was delivered by Mr Lincoln in 1838 during a speech in Springfield, Illinois.

"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide," he said.

The version of the quote Ms Trump used was a corruption that was passed around on Facebook in right-wing circles.

Ms Trump has long been a part of the president's campaign efforts. During his 2016 run for the White House, she began hosting a Trump-focused "news" show on YouTube called "Real News Update".

She claimed the objective of the show was to show positive news about the president and to pull viewers away from consuming traditional news sources.

Her show is directly funded by the Trump 2020 re-election campaign, and has been compared to propaganda or state-run TV by Slate, The Washington Post and Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Show.

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