Pence’s ordeal isn’t deterring Trump’s potential ticket mates
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
(CNN) — Being Donald Trump’s vice president didn’t end well for Mike Pence — but there’s no sign his painful split from the ex-president over his anti-constitutional demands is scaring off any of the hopefuls keen to slip into his shoes.
The presumptive GOP nominee’s search for a new number two is expected to culminate with a dramatic unveiling at the Republican National Convention in a month, likely choreographed to engineer a TV ratings bump.
At various points, the list of possible contenders has included Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
Trump shattered all conventions about the business of running for president and serving in the Oval Office. And putting potential running mates through a televised audition process is no exception. The old school playbook in which possible nominees feign a lack of interest in the post to maximize their chances of getting it is antithetical to Trump’s way of operating.
Possible picks trying to catch Trump’s eye go on television, knowing he’s probably watching, and sprinkle compliments, talk up his chances of winning, amplify his voter fraud conspiracy theories and slam his criminal conviction. Some have made clear that they wouldn’t have done what Pence did on January 6, 2021, when he concluded that he did not have power to change the outcome of the 2020 election in Congress.
The almost total adoption of Trump’s mantras suggests that the experience of the last Republican vice president — who was hunted with calls of “Hang Mike Pence” by members of the Trump mob that attacked the Capitol — is not giving them much pause. This despite history suggesting that, at some point in their potential mandate, a possible President Trump might ask them to so something that tests their consciences, the law or the Constitution.
The attractiveness of the vice presidential nomination may reflect Trump’s magnetism and the heady euphoria of being a key player in the “Make America Great Again” movement. For people who are wired with ambition, whether up-and-coming politicians or those who have always dreamed of the presidency but have fallen short, the vice presidency can be an attractive proposition. The job has many indignities, which include always being overshadowed by the boss, taking foreign trips he doesn’t want to do, and having no real formal duties apart from being a constitutional safety net if the president dies. But the increasing belief among Republicans that the presidency is there for the taking this year — evident from their bullish public statements — means a spot on Trump’s ticket is a hot ticket. And morbidly, there’s a chance to be a heartbeat away from the presidency alongside a commander in chief who would be 82 by the end of his term.
In many ways, Pence created a template right up until the moment in the last two weeks of his tenure that fractured his relationship with his president and ruined his post-West Wing political career. He could hardly have been more loyal to Trump, even through the ex-president’s botched handling of a once-in-a-century pandemic, and at times that loyalty manifested as misty-eyed veneration.
A Trump heir?
Trump may not think about what will happen to his MAGA movement when he’s no longer active in politics. But a second-term vice president might also be positioned to become his political heir — a proposition especially appealing to someone like Vance, a 39-year-old who has transformed himself from a harsh Trump critic to MAGA protégé.
The first-term senator has not been afraid to advance his own credentials. In strikingly frank comments on Fox News on Monday, he said, “If Trump picks up the phone and calls you, the first sort of thought you have to have with yourself is not just, could I be vice president, but could I stand ultimately in the big chair? And look, if he asked me, I’ll think about it, but I think the answer is yes,” he said.
The Ohio Republican said that he’d not been asked about the job by Trump but made clear in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in May that he wasn’t put off by what happened to Pence on January 6, 2021, after Trump publicly called on him to use his power as vice president to oversee the counting of Electoral College votes to cancel out President Joe Biden’s victory. “I’m extremely skeptical that Mike Pence’s life was ever in danger,” Vance said.
He has also made clear to Trump that he wouldn’t have adopted Pence’s interpretation of the constitutional limits on vice presidential powers. “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 US Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance told ABC News in February. “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.” There is no constitutional justification for such a course of action.
Vance’s potential rivals for a spot on Trump’s ticket
Vance is one of several potential vice presidential nominees, along with Rubio and Burgum, who have been sent vetting materials by the Trump campaign, CNN reported earlier this month.
Burgum has taken a classic route of parlaying an unsuccessful presidential campaign into a spot in the vice presidential derby. In some ways, he’s similar to Pence, who was a deeply conservative Indiana governor. The North Dakota governor has also shown the kind of unquestioning loyalty that Trump prizes. He’s rich, a self-made businessman and is the kind of person with whom the ex-president has spent his life in boardrooms and golf clubs. And he’s not flamboyant enough to steal the once and possibly future president’s headlines.
Burgum has said that he believes that Biden won the 2020 election, but has also raised concerns about its fairness, playing into Trump’s false claims that changes in electoral practices to account for the Covid-19 emergency amount to fraud. And he’s also endeared himself to the ex-president by downplaying his criminal conviction in New York for falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to a former adult film star as a mere trifle over accounting.
Rubio has taken a lower-key approach compared to some of his rivals. But the Florida senator, who many people in Washington think still nurtures presidential ambitions after losing in humiliating fashion to Trump in the 2016 primary, appears to have been trying to make himself more palatable as a vice presidential pick. He has fervently criticized Trump’s conviction in New York and in May said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’d only accept the result of the 2024 election if it was fair — despite the lack of any indication that it wouldn’t be.
On the same show, he signaled that despite his past ridicule of Trump on the 2016 campaign trail, and many of his original positions on issues like foreign policy and immigration that seem to clash with the ex-president, he’d be ready to serve alongside him. “I think anyone who’s offered that job to serve this country in the second highest office — assuming everything else in your life makes sense at that moment — if you’re interested in serving the country, it’s an incredible place to serve,” he said. More recently, Rubio has been conjuring speculation about a possible inside track to the VP job by joining Trump for policy discussions ahead of the first presidential debate on CNN next Thursday.
While most of the focus has been on Rubio, Burgum and Vance, Trump’s unorthodox approach and love of keeping people off balance means that a surprise pick can’t be ruled out. One potential candidate whose star seems to have dimmed is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who rolled out a book earlier this year in an apparent bid to boost her chances but became mired in a controversy over her tale of shooting the family dog.
In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on June 9, Noem looked like she was trying to revive her candidacy, as she urged Trump to pick a female running mate. “All the polls tell him in these swing states that a woman on the ticket helps him win. The polls just say that,” she said. Referring to a campaign trip to Wisconsin, a critical swing state, the South Dakota governor said independent voters and those leaning toward Trump “also want to know that their perspective is going to be at the table when decisions are made.”
Less than a month before Trump is expected to make his choice, there’s no real clarity on who it will be. And that’s how the ex-president likes it.
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