OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
New speculation as to who former President Donald Trump will pick as his running mate has dropped ahead of an upcoming rally in Florida.
Newsweek reports that Trump said that he will be traveling to Doral on July 9, a city close to Sen. Marco Rubio’s hometown of Miami. The ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and 2016 GOP presidential rival has long been considered as a top-rated running mate for the former president.
The rally at Trump National Doral Golf Club is set to occur just under a week before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Donald Trump is anticipated to be confirmed as the GOP’s presidential nominee for 2024. CNN has reported that Trump’s team has downplayed the idea that the former president might announce his vice presidential running mate at the rally scheduled for July 9.
Brian Hughes, Trump’s spokesperson, told the news network: “As President Trump has said himself, the top criteria in selecting a Vice President is a strong leader who will make a great President for eight years after his next four-year term concludes. But anyone telling you they know who or when President Trump will choose his VP is lying unless that person is named Donald J. Trump.”
Nevertheless, some political commentators have speculated about the location of the rally.
James Oliphant, a national political correspondent for Reuters, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Trump will hold a rally in Doral, FLA on July 9 in basically Marco Rubio’s backyard. Does that mean Rubio is the VP pick? It seems to me that it’s never that straightforward.”
“The Trump VP announcement is rumored to be in Miami. Could it mean that he’s picking Rubio? Maybe, but that’s far from definitive,” Red Eagle Politics, a pro-Trump political YouTuber, added on X.
Other names thought to be on Trump’s shortlist for his vice president are North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, Sen. Tim Scott, and Florida Representative Byron Donalds.
Meanwhile, the news is not good for President Biden following his debate with Trump.
The results of internal Democratic polling leaked to a D.C.-focused news organization are more bad news for President Joe Biden following his horrendous debate against former President Donald Trump a week ago.
According to Puck News, Biden is losing even more ground to former President Donald Trump in the battleground states, but also, reliably blue states that have voted Democrat for decades are also in play, the polling shows.
The nonprofit OpenLabs “conducts polling and message-testing for a constellation of Democratic groups, including the 501(c)4 nonprofit associated with Future Forward, the preferred Super PAC for Biden’s reelection campaign,” veteran political journalist and former CNN correspondent Peter Hamby wrote. OpenLabs is a Democrat/left polling firm.
Hamby wrote that the data found that 40 percent of voters who supported Biden in 2020 now think he should leave the race. An OpenLabs poll in May had that number at only 25 percent.
“This is, of course, only a single poll, conducted during the initial aftershocks of the debate. It will take a few weeks to determine if Biden’s slippage in the polls is a trend and not a blip,” he wrote. “But given their reputation inside the party and connections to Future Forward, OpenLabs is a firm that Democratic campaigns take seriously.”
“In the tipping-point state of Pennsylvania, Biden now trails by 7 points, compared to 5 points before the debate,” Hamby wrote. “He has also dropped in Michigan, where he now trails Trump by 7. OpenLabs also found that he is now losing by roughly 10 points in Georgia and Arizona, and by almost 9 points in Nevada.”
As bad as that is for Biden, it gets worse.
“Biden is now only winning by a fraction of a point in Virginia, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico — and he’s now only winning Colorado by around 2 points,” Hamby wrote.
