Trump swallowing his ego sounds about as likely as Trump apologizing to Hillary Clinton and donating all his wealth to charity.
Yeah, probably. He’ll likely pick another Mike Pence type - a party guy with little charisma and no threat to Trump’s status as big dog. But he really needs to pick someone who can be stood up to run for President next time. Incumbency is a powerful tool to waste on an open convention should Trump run out his term wothout an obvious successor.
But his primary problem (heh) is that DeSantis is clearly getting ready to run against him. DeSantis is really the only one right now who has significant Republican support other than Trump, and he won’t be as easy to push around as were the Republican challengers in 2016.
So Trump is facing a bruising intra-party fight with DeSantis, which even if he wins will leave him even more damaged. Anything he can do to avoid that would be to his benefit, but I’m not sure he can. That ship may have sailed. DeSantis has apparently skipped the ‘investigate the feasibility of running’ stage and is currently putting together a campaign team. He’s running. And that’s big trouble for Trump, even though Trump is currently more popular with Republicans.
I agree with everything you said here.
I also think it won’t happen (not that you said that it would either), but I agree that Trump/DeSantis would probably be a strong ticket for the Republicans.
I think Trump is going to pick a wack-job woman who acts sycophantic, like Marjorie Taylor-Greene or Kari Lake. His pitch is all grievance and retribution, openly so, not anything like “let’s get back to business”.
Kari Lake, maybe. If she had won any of her challenges, for sure. But she didn’t, and that has damaged her. And if Trump has any brains he will drop the 2020 election steal nonsense like a hot rock, as it’s not a vote winning position. If runs on, “Vote for me, buecause the election was stolen last time and I deserve it”, he will lose bigly. He needs to run on fixing what ails Americans today, and I think Kari Lake would be a distraction from that.
That said, Trump could actually run on a personal grievance platform, and Lake would fit into that nicely. Then they’d both lose.
As for MTG, I don’t think Trump is quite that stupid. She brings nothing to the table. She attracts the same ‘base’ he’s already got, and alienates moderate Republicans and everyone else. Conventional wisdom is that the VP pick must bring something you need - their home state in an election, gravitas, experience, whatever. What does MTG bring, other than lots of Twitter videos of her saying stupid things?
Nikki Haley will drop out later in the game and ride as Trumps VP !
It really feels like you’re analyzing Trump like he’s a fresh, new politician with no history to speak of. What, if anything, gives you any expectation at all that Trump might “drop the 2020 election steal nonsense”? When has he ever done anything like that? He was president for 4 years, and he never dropped the Hillary Clinton conspiracy nonsense. He still hasn’t!
Which is why I said that despite it being a loser, Trump could in fact pick Lake and run on a personal grievance platform. Did you not read that?
Trump knows he doesn’t have to win over moderate Republicans. They’ll vote for him anyway.
Yes, but you keep hypothesizing “if Trump has any brains…” and whatnot; sounds to me like hypothesizing “if an elephant could drive a car…”
YMMV.
I’m going to go out in a limb and suggest that he’ll pick - or at least try to pick - Donald Trump Jr. as his running mate.
I think Trump hates having a Vice-President, for several reasons. First, it’s a constant reminder of his mortality and fallibility and he doesn’t like that. He also doesn’t like sharing the spotlight or giving anyone else credit for anything. And the VP is the only high level position that isn’t under Trump’s thumb. He can’t fire his VP. In Trump’s ideal world, he wouldn’t have a VP at all, and Don Jr. Is as close to nothing as he can get.
ETA: Except for Eric, but Junior has raised kissing up to Daddy to an art form, and I think Kimberly may be pushing for a high visibility role for her perpetual fiancé.
And Trump has that mob thing going where he doesn’t fully trust anyone that isn’t family and that goes double if he can’t fire them. In his mind, he’s been burned by almost every Republican out there, including his last VP.
Now, those who don’t think this is a possibility might point to Trump’s utter lack of respect for his son’s capabilities. But that doesn’t matter, because Trump intends to reduce the role of the VP to total irrelevancy. He neither needs or wants a VP. But he does want the money that was used to fund the VP’s office.
This goes to a tidbit I picked up from some of the White House tell-all books that I’m fond of reading. There is a budget, set by someone other than Trump, for Presidential staff. Trump likes to hire lots of “Special Assistants to the President”, more than the number of top salaried assistants allocated to his office. In his first )and hopefully last) term, Trump raided the office budget for the First Lady, reducing her to a skeleton staff, so he could hire KellyAnne and Omarosa and Steve Bannon. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to raid the VP’s staff budget, and with Junior in that office, he wouldn’t get any objection.
Sure, his Republican strategists will howl if he tries this, but Trump won’t care. He cares nothing for convention and, as a narcissist, he really thinks it doesn’t matter who he picks for VP in terms of his election chances. He’s convinced his victory will be his and his alone.
So I think it’s going to be Trump / Trump 2024.
Now some of you may be thinking……what is she talking about, only a crazy person would do that and Trump’s not crazy, Trump Derangement Syndrome, yada yada.
Prior to the 2020 election there were several thread on whether or not Trump would accept his defeat if he lost, and many conservatives reacted the same way. I sometimes retrieve those threads and read them when I want a laugh.
Truth.
I seem to recall Junior talking about running for President in '24, after Daddy got re-elected. Or maybe that was Eric in 24 and 28, with Junior waiting his turn until 2032.
Trump doesn’t care about this part. Those people are not-Trump. He’d happily be President for life or torpedo any other Republican candidates on a whim. He’s not GOP-they’re just his enablers. He’s Trump.
That’s what John McCain thought.
Well, tbf, this would have been a three-post thread if we excluded unlikely hypotheticals.
This is still a valid question.
Trump remains likely to win the Republican nomination. No serious contender has dared impugn him, so why settle for a lesser Trump?
Although Trump has alienated the sensible, he certainly has a chance of winning. There are many who prefer entertainment to governance.
I’m sure the both of them will flip a coin on Election Day.
I recently heard that Gov. Younkin might be angling for a VP spot. I could definitely see it as a possibility. In the last few presidential elections VA has been a bluish swing state that with a bit of a shove could shift to Red, and Youngkin is relatively popular in the state.
He’s got strong credentials on the anti-CRT, anti-Vax, anti-trans front, which I think Trump is a bit behind the curve on. But he doesn’t have the high profile ambition of DeSantis or Abbot which Trump might find threatening.
As long as he gets out of Virginia, I’ll be happy.
Did you do any reading, or at least read the thread?
The well-known law against a Trump/DeSantis ticket was discussed earlier: