Trump stirs speculation about his choice for running mate

WASHINGTON (TND) — Former President Donald Trump has stirred speculation over who his potential running mate might be after name-dropping a pair of options to join him at the top of the Republican ticket in 2024.

Trump said he won’t be announcing his vice presidential selection “for a while” in an interview on Fox News, but offered two possible choices along with the criteria to be his No. 2 — South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

"Always, it's got to be who is going to be a good president. Obviously, you always have to think that because in case of emergency. Things happen, right? No matter who you are, things happen. That's got to be No. 1," Trump said.

A long list of potential candidates has been speculated throughout the primary campaign as the field has shrunk after Trump solidified his standing with voters despite facing 91 felony counts, lingering unpopularity among the general electorate and had a pair of dominant wins in the first two primaries.

Trump has not secured the nomination for president but is favored by heavy margins in national polling over former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley heading into her home state’s primary election later this month. Most candidates do not announce a vice president selection until summer during the party’s nominating conventions.

Trump has downplayed the impact choosing a running mate could have on the election, which polling indicates is likely to be closely contested and decided in just a handful of swing states.

Kellyanne Conway, who was Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and was a senior adviser during his time in the Oval Office, predicted that Trump would keep people guessing on the pick.

“His short list will be long and dynamic. One thing he doesn’t need to do is rush this decision. He has said the V.P. pick ‘won’t have any impact at all’ on the election, and so far, his hold on the rank-and-file electorate and his capacity to grow his vote underscore that,” she wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday.

But who his vice president might be appears to be coming into focus and he told Fox News that he is talking to a lot of people.

“I called Tim Scott and people like Tim Scott, and I said, ‘you're a much better candidate for me than you are for yourself,’" Trump said. "When I watched him, he was fine. He was good, but he was very low-key."

Scott was part of the crowd challenging Trump for the nomination, but ended his campaign before Iowa and has since been a frequent presence at Trump’s rallies after giving him an endorsement. Unlike some of the others in the field, Scott gave very limited criticism of Trump during his campaign.

Noem has also been a close ally of Trump since he was in office and also has ties to senior members of his previous campaigns.

"Kristi Noem has been incredible fighting for me. She said, 'I'd never run against him because I can't beat him.' That was a very nice thing to say,” he said, adding that they had “never had that conversation” about her being his running mate.

Other potential VP picks have served as surrogates throughout the early primary cycle and have said they would serve in a second Trump administration.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican, was the first to endorse Trump during the 2024 cycle and has been a frequent defender of his on Capitol Hill and during media appearances. She was a member of his impeachment defense team in 2019, voted against certifying the 2020 election results and has also embraced similar positions to Trump on Jan. 6 defendants and the judges who are overseeing the prosecutions against him.

“Well, I, of course, would be honored to serve in any capacity in a Trump administration,” Stefanik said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who turned from a critic of the former president to one of his biggest supporters, has also been considered a potential running mate. He said in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that he would not have certified the 2020 election had he been the vice president.

Trump has continued to claim the 2020 election was “stolen” from him despite a series of losses in courts challenging the results and no evidence of widespread fraud taking place.

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that's what we should have done,” Vance said.

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