Lara Trump is featured in Elle magazine and Twitter has thoughts: 'Normalizing this crime family is wrong'

Elise Solé

Elle magazine’s splashy feature on Lara Trump calling her “one of the most powerful women in the United States of America” caused a skirmish on social media.

The six-page feature, called “The Good Soldier,” was published in the magazine’s November “Women in Hollywood” issue. Written by the magazine’s executive editor Emma Rosenblum and shot by photographer Celeste Sloman, it contains a photo of the president’s daughter-in-law riding a horse bareback while wearing a Longchamp blouse, a Fabiana Filippi vest and Ariat riding pants.

The story starts with an anecdote about how Lara, 36, initially met Donald Trump during her six-year courtship with his son Eric, whom she wed in November 2014 at Mar-a-Lago. At the U.S. Open, the now-president put Lara at ease by offering to buy her an ice cream cone. “And I was like, ‘Oh this is so normal. I don’t know why it made me feel so much more comfortable, but it did,'” she says.

View this post on Instagram

“A lot of people just scatter messages. She finds her voice.” — photo & quote courtesy Elle Magazine, November 2018

A post shared by Lara Trump (@laraleatrump) on Nov 13, 2018 at 2:18pm PST

The story wavers between flattering — describing Lara’s appearance as “a Snapchat filter come to life” — and hard-hitting. When Lara praises Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner‘s White House efforts that are “making a huge difference,” such as her paid family leave mission and his “prison reform stuff,” Rosenblum clarifies that Kushner’s initiatives hadn’t solidified. (At least that was true at the time of publication — on Thursday, the president announced his support for Kushner’s First Step Act, a bipartisan bill that, among other measures, gives flexibility to mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses and shortens prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, reports ABC News.)

Lara also talks of her respect for first lady Melania Trump, saying, “It’s got to be really isolating to be the First Lady, and I don’t think people really ever consider that” and answers questions about Melania’s controversial “I really don’t care. Do u?” jacket. “I haven’t even asked her about that,” she says, before describing Melania Trump as an intellectual and a polyglot.

Instagrammers appreciated the profile. “Finally, some beautiful media coverage of Trump ‘power women,'” wrote someone. “We all need to head out and buy this magazine,” wrote another. “To show our support for Lara Trump.” Added someone else, “Thank you — it’s about time. Now our First Lady, please. If Melania was a Democrat, she’d be on the $50 bill by now.”

The story was also described as a biased “hit piece” on Twitter. For example, the author cites statistics that found 60 percent of women without college degrees disapprove of Donald Trump: “It’s up to Lara to keep Republican women in the fold, to give the Trump administration a peppy, TV-friendly sheen for those low-information female voters who’d like to reelect Trump and not have to feel bad about it.”

And the writer wonders aloud if Lara is a spin doctor who believes that President Trump is good for America, writing, “Which based on every single story coming out of the White House for the past two years, is completely, totally, maybe, 1,000 percent untrue, or if she’s lying through her bright, white teeth.”

People disliked the idea of profiling Lara to begin with. One woman who called the article a “puff piece” compared it to a March 2011 Vogue profile of Asma Assad, the first lady of Syria and the wife of dictator Bashar Assad. At the time, after social media trashed the magazine for describing Asma as “glamorous, young, and very chic” the article was deleted.

Someone else canceled her Elle subscription because “normalizing this crime family is wrong.”

Evidence of the shoot can be viewed on Lara’s Instagram page, but the printed story itself isn’t published on Elle‘s website or seemingly promoted anywhere else on social media. A spokesperson from Elle‘s parent company Hearst tells Yahoo Lifestyle that “The Good Soldier” will soon be published online.

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