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Former President Donald Trump has yet to announce a running mate for his 2024 campaign but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t settled on someone. Previous reporting claimed that the 45th president would likely choose a female running mate and several names have been mentioned.
Former White House Steve Bannon shared some interesting information about former President Donald Trump’s potential 2024 running mate. During an episode on the “War Room” podcast, Bannon revealed one interesting name.
“By the way, I just want to make an aside before I bring Derek Harvey in. When I did Q-and-A and I did about an hour of Q-and-A, they had a little technical problem. But I did Q-and-A, which I think people were here. I want to make sure people understand this,” Bannon said.
“Somebody asked about Robert F. Kennedy and the great speech at Hillsdale, his opening speech and what did I think about his prospects. And I said, “Look, I’m a Kari Lake person, but if Kari Lake becomes governor, as she should if this court case, or if not, she runs for the Senate. If she’s not available to be Trump’s VP that Bobby Kennedy would be, I think, an excellent choice for President Trump to consider. There was a standing ovation and this was a very hardcore MAGA war room posse crowd,” he added.
Bannon thinks 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. could be Trump’s running mate.
“I think that that is a signal to the political elites in this country that something very different is going on. And I thought it was quite extraordinary. Robert Kennedy Jr. has huge support for the American populist movement. Look for the GOP elites to start their attacks on Bobby any day now,” Bannon continued.
Trump’s team recently shared some interesting insight into his potential running mate.
Trump insiders spoke to the Daily Caller and said the 45th president is likely to pick a vice presidential candidate that is “loyal,” has “charisma,” and is “ideologically aligned” with him.
“No candidates have publicly announced their intent to be Trump’s VP, but the former president has indicated that ‘a lot of people’ are ‘auditioning’ behind the scenes. Trump insiders told the Caller that although there haven’t been any formal discussions to narrow down the pool, there are a set of characteristics that will likely be considered,” the Daily Caller reported.
“We do know one thing about Trump, is that he puts a lot of weight on how well you present yourself. That really matters to him, so I suspect that will matter for his VP choice,” a GOP consultant close to Trump told the Caller, adding that the person needs to be “TV ready.”
“Loyalty. That’s the necessary characteristic of anyone who wants to be VP. President Trump and the movement was dragged down by disloyalty in the White House,” a source close to Trump said.
While the insiders did not name anyone specifically in the interview, they did at least share some insight into the type of person he would be interested in.
A recent Politico report stated that an unnamed Trump adviser said the 45th president is likely to choose a running mate “from three general lanes of candidates: women, conservatives of color, or a trusted adviser.”
“Once you get past those two issues — loyalty and Trump going more with his gut — Trump has a lot of leeway in who he would pick,” said Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s lead pollster in 2016 and 2020.
“He’s not necessarily looking to balance the ticket geographically, but what he can do is pick to balance gender, race, ethnicity — a lot of different lanes there. It could be everything from a Tim Scott in South Carolina to an Asian American in California or somebody Hispanic in Texas. There are so many choices and paths. And there’s lots of time to go,” he added.
According to a report from the Washington Examiner, these four Republican women could be high on Trump’s shortlist: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and former Arizona journalist Kari Lake.
The Washington Examiner reported:
Sanders, the youngest governor in the United States and the longest-tenured press secretary in the Trump White House flew up political draft boards after she delivered what Trump supporters agree was an “exceptionally strong” response to Biden’s State of the Union on Feb. 7.
Noem was elected as South Dakota’s first female governor in 2018 after spending more than a decade in the House of Representatives and has made a name for herself as a leading Republican lawmaker in the so-called “culture wars.”
Stefanik, the current chairwoman of the House GOP conference, was elected as a centrist Republican in 2015 but, after serving on the president’s defense team during his first impeachment, has shifted increasingly to the right. She frequently touts her strong ties to Trump and even endorsed his 2024 run days before he announced his candidacy.
Lake is perhaps the strangest potential pick and one many current and former Trump advisers hope he avoids. The former Phoenix-area news anchor lost her Trump-endorsed 2022 gubernatorial bid against Democrat Katie Hobbs, but she only further endeared herself to the former president by repeatedly claiming that widespread fraud occurred in the 2020 election.
One name not mentioned in the Washinton Examiner report is Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Her name has been floated in the media recently.
