Who wants Mike Pence’s old job?
Carlos Lozada, Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and Lydia Polgreen
Donald Trump is searching for a running mate. Four New York Times Opinion writers discussed Trump’s choice. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Carlos Lozada: Trump seemed to have an audition of a few options at a fundraising event in Palm Beach. Among those invited to this donor retreat were Senators Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Tim Scott, Governors Doug Burgum and Kristi Noem, and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. Michelle, back in January, you suggested that Trump might consider Kristi Noem.
Michelle Cottle: If we move right along from Gov. Puppy Killer, I still think the model has a lot of merit. You know, throw a little peace offering to the women. Find somebody who is super loyal. We thought she wasn’t dramatic enough to completely upstage him, but who knew?
Lozada: All right. So if we’ve knocked Kristi Noem out of contention, who has a case to make for someone who is a strong option?
Ross Douthat: I think Rubio makes a certain sense for Trump, but he and Trump are both residents of Florida. And that is constitutionally prohibited. He would have to move out of the state that he represents in the Senate. He was vehemently anti-Trump in 2016, and there’s nothing that Trump loves more than a convert to his cause.
At the same time, Rubio has remained a kind of hawkish, establishment-friendly Republican to a greater degree than, for instance, JD Vance. I think he would be a more reassuring pick for a lot of Republican donors and foreign policy types.
Lozada: You’re off the JD Vance train?
Douthat: I don’t think I’ve ever thought that Vance is the ideal pick for Trump in terms of winning the election. I think Vance is a pick that you make if you’re saying, “OK, this time we’re doing populist policy, and we’re doing it right and we’re not letting the establishment run roughshod over us.”
Lydia Polgreen: I’m going to go with the choice who is most similar to Rubio: Tim Scott. He obviously has shown incredible servile loyalty. He came to Congress as part of the establishment rather than as part of the MAGA horde, and I think that’s helpful. He can sort of read as normal, although his willingness to embrace election denialism mitigates against his normalcy.
I also think that in Trump’s incredibly reductive — I would say quite sort of racist — way, he probably thinks that Scott’s going to help him attract Black voters, and in particular Black male voters, though I think he’s kind of mistaken about that. Lozada: Michelle?
Cottle: I think Elise Stefanik is the model with a twist. She gives the nod to suburban women and has worked to make the party more female-friendly. She’s good with the establishment, she’s very business friendly, good with fundraising.
At the same time, though, she has come around to be incredibly obsequious, a big MAGA bootlicker.
Now, I don’t know if she’s glam enough for him, but he desperately needs at least some small entree to suburban women, especially in the post-Roe era.
Polgreen: I think that Trump’s greatest need is loyalty, because he wants to be able to pick up where he left off. No one who we’ve talked about has shown any sign of any kind of disloyalty. I think fealty to election denialism is probably the No. 1 litmus test for that loyalty.
Cottle: I think loyalty is not a passive matter. You see the people who have been auditioning aggressively for this position out there on the campaign trail. He’s doing test drives for who can make a good argument on TV for all of the things that are important to him.
This is a guy, obviously, for whom media ability is very important. It’s not just a matter of agreeing with him; you need to be a fighter. You need to get out there and make that case for him.
Douthat: If Trump wins a second term, he’ll be in an unusual situation where he has a new vice president, but not eight years to go. The vice president will immediately be a candidate for president in 2028.
I think Trump’s concern might be less about loyalty during the course of the 2024 election and more, to what extent does this person have a kind of independent brand that they could sort of cultivate over four years? That’s a case for not picking the two senators with the biggest profiles, Vance and Rubio.
Cottle: I think that’s also kind of a case in a negative way for Stefanik because I don’t think Trump thinks about women as logical leaders. I don’t think that that’s how he views them. I think he’s an old-fashioned sexist in that regard.
Lozada: There’s no greater compliment in Trump’s vocabulary than killer and that’s what he calls Stefanik. You’re never going to hear him calling Tim Scott a killer.