Former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, can now be seen as a contender for the 2022 Senate race after Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) voted to convict the former president in the Senate impeachment trial.
“Certainly I would be behind her because she represents the future of the Republican party,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of Lara Trump, who is the wife of Eric Trump.
Burr, who previously chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, is slated to retire in 2022.
“The biggest winner I think of this whole impeachment trial is Lara Trump,” the South Carolina senator said on Fox News Sunday. “My dear friend Richard Burr, who I like and have been friends with for a long time, just made Lara Trump almost the certain nominee for the Senate seat in North Carolina to replace him if she runs.”
“And at the end of the day I’ve been involved in politics for over 25 years,” Graham added. “The president is a handful and what happened [at the Capitol] on 6 January was terrible for the country. But he’s not singularly to blame. Democrats have sat on the sidelines and watched the country being burned down for a year and a half and not said a damn word, and most Republicans are tired of the hypocrisy.”
Burr, in explaining his vote, said the Democrat House managers’ “evidence [was] compelling” that Trump allegedly incited violence during the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Burr’s vote was later condemned by the North Carolina Republican Party. The other North Carolina senator, Thom Tillis, a Republican, voted to acquit Trump.
“North Carolina Republicans sent Senator Burr to the United States Senate to uphold the Constitution and his vote today to convict in a trial that he declared unconstitutional is shocking and disappointing,” the party chairman said in a statement.
Lara Trump, a former personal trainer, has not made any public comments on whether she’d run for office. A report in November claimed, citing anonymous sources, that she would be considering the Senate seat.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Trump’s team for comment.
In the vote, seven of the 50 Senate Republicans joined the chamber’s unified Democrats in favoring conviction. The House last month impeached Trump for allegedly inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6. Trump was acquitted by the Senate on Saturday.
