- Lara Trump, Eric Trump's wife, will stop being a paid Fox News contributor, per the LA Times.
- Company protocol doesn't allow the network to employ people linked to active campaigns.
- The decision was made after former President Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid.
Lara Trump, who is married to former President Donald Trump's son Eric Trump, is no longer a paid contributor for Fox News because of her father-in-law's 2024 announcement, the Los Angeles Times first reported.
The network told the Times on Saturday that Lara Trump, who became a Fox News contributor last year, would no longer be paid to appear on the network.
"We appreciate Lara's valuable contributions across FOX News Media programming," a Fox News representative told Insider in a statement.
According to the Times, her departure is due to company rules that do not allow people running for office or directly linked to active campaigns to be employed by the network.
The network decided that Lara Trump was directly connected to her father-in-law's campaign, the Los Angeles Times said. She has been a surrogate for the former president and received payment for advisory roles.
The newspaper said she hadn't appeared on Fox News since the week of November 15, which is when the former president announced his third presidential run. She can still, in theory, appear as an unpaid guest.
There is a precedent for such decisions; Sarah Huckabee Sanders had her paid-contributor deal terminated when she announced she was running for governor of Arkansas.
Fox News is owned by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The British newspaper i cited unnamed sources last month saying Murdoch had warned Trump that his media empire wouldn't back a Trump White House bid. His publications, including The Wall Street Journal, described Trump as a "loser" after the 2022 midterm results were disappointing for Republicans.
The British newspaper also cited a source saying Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's elder son, had told Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida that the media group would back him if he ran against Trump in 2024.