Trump’s VP pageant has strong contender in Sen. Cotton
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas has unexpectedly emerged as a top contender to become Donald Trump’s running mate, a signal that the former president is heavily weighing experience and the ability to run a disciplined campaign over other factors.
Cotton’s ascendance comes as Trump’s leading vice-presidential options have increasingly come into focus, according to three people with direct knowledge of Trump’s thinking who insisted on anonymity to discuss private meetings.
These people said Trump’s other current favorites were Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and three of Cotton’s Senate colleagues: Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and JD Vance of Ohio. The former president has also discussed the five Republican men as potential candidates for administration posts if he were to unseat President Joe Biden in November.
Still, the people close to Trump cautioned that his vice-presidential preferences might change. The former president declined to reveal his leading candidates in an interview Thursday with News 12, but mentioned Rubio and Vance as well as Ben Carson, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York as examples of people “who would do a really fantastic job.”
But his current list of top five picks reflects Trump’s desire to choose a running mate who would carry relatively little risk of creating unwanted distractions for a presidential campaign already facing multiple legal threats.
Trump’s interest in Cotton, who won a second term in the Senate in 2020, reflects this do-noharm mentality.
The former president has said privately that he views Cotton as a reliable and effective communicator in cable news interviews. Trump has also praised Cotton’s Army service, which included deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that he is a fellow Ivy League graduate. Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania, and Cotton attended Harvard University, earning undergraduate and law degrees.
A spokesperson for Cotton declined to comment. When asked about serving in a second Trump administration, the senator has said that his discussions with the former president have focused on how to win a second term.