Last week, Lara Trump (co-chair of the Republican National Committee and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law) posted a video of herself recording a tribute song to firefighters called “Hero.” While her intentions may have been good, her voice on the song was not.
The song opens with Madeline James, an artist with just 1,500 followers who describes herself in her Instagram bio as a “sick Victorian baby.” Unlike Trump, James can sing, playing a few high notes on a low piano while a reenactment of firefighters rescuing a little girl from a fire (Hallmark movie-style) plays on the screen.
Then, about a minute and twenty seconds into the song, Trump's distracted voice (overshadowed by the auto-tuning) comes in to ruin the song. “It takes a lot to put you last and put everybody first,” Trump sings, struggling to keep a tone in her life.
A video of Trump singing the song began to gain traction on X on Labor Day. “Every note is a violation of the Geneva Convention,” read one comment. “My dogs were acting up until I turned up the volume to hear the sound. They stopped and started howling. This has nothing to do with music,” wrote another.
“Who takes her money and tells her she can sing?” reads the widely shared video repost.
Trump apparently wasn’t happy with what she recorded, as there’s no trace of her sharing the video on her social media. On the other hand, James shared photos of herself with Trump in the studio earlier this year, where she threatened to “share more” of the collaboration “with the world soon.”
“I’m excited to see what happens next for Lara in the music world,” James wrote on Instagram, posting a video for the song. (James may be the only one.) “She has made a huge impact on my existence as a young artist in this competitive and ever-evolving environment.”
This isn’t the first time Lara Trump has sparked online debate over her singing voice. Last October, a video of her singing a terrible version of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” during an appearance on Sky News Australia went viral. At the time, someone somehow edited the video to make her singing sound worse. The Associated Press even fact-checked the footage.
The Trump cover isn't the only time the Trump family has tried to exploit “I Won't Back Down” as a MAGA song — they seriously angered the Petty family in 2020 by using it.
