Trump Wants a Good-Looking, Election-Denying, Shorter-Than-Him Running Mate Whom He Doesn’t Have to “See Too Much”: Report

At some point in the next several months, Donald Trump—having parted ways with his veep, whom he almost got killed—is going to have to announce a 2024 running mate. Who is the lucky lady, or lad, going to be? No one, including the GOP presidential candidate himself, seems to know. The short list, a Trump adviser told The Washington Post, is “growing, not shrinking,” and the ex-president continues to come up with new names for consideration. But he definitely has some requirements that narrow the field of potential candidates.

According to the Post, Trump—who is approaching his veepstakes like he’s on an episode of The Apprentice—ideally wants a person who is:

“Attractive”“Telegenic”“Not taller than Trump himself”Committed to upholding the lie that the 2020 election was stolenAround, but not a lot (“Trump wants someone he sees in person but doesn’t see too much”)A winner, in that they’ve won a previous electionNot going to take over the MAGA movement from him (“He would prefer that the Republican Party duke it out for his endorsement in four years”)Perhaps Black and/or a woman, though neither is a must

People whose names have been thrown around—some of whom Trump himself has confirmed are being considered—reportedly include Ohio senator J.D. Vance, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Alabama senator Katie Britt, Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty, Florida senator Marco Rubio, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, Florida representative Byron Donalds, New York representative Elise Stefanik, and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Lake, who is currently running for Senate, has never won a race, which is presumably a mark against her. (Also, it was reported last July that Trump had grown “less enthusiastic” about her because he found her to be a “spotlight hound.”) According to the Post, Trump has questioned if Noem has too much “baggage,” and some of his top advisers were reportedly “put off” by Teethgate.

For his part, Trump has claimed that his veep pick “won’t have any impact at all” on the race, and given the cult of personality that surrounds the ex-president, that could conceivably be true. Yet, according to a report from Puck, Trump has been increasingly concerned about “the a-word,” i.e., abortion, and how a potential running mate could hurt or help him on the issue. (To be clear, Trump isn’t concerned about reproductive rights from, like, the standpoint of wanting people to be free to make their own choices about their own bodies; rather, he’s concerned about how abortion has been a losing issue for Republicans.) And the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision this week to uphold a Civil War–era law effectively banning abortion, one day after Trump said the matter should be decided by the states, may play a role in who receives the VP nod.

Per Puck:

Indeed, a source close to Trump told me that since landing on the states rights position, he has explicitly changed his VP calculus, removing from his short list governors from states without exceptions for abortion in cases of rape or incest, or any state with a so-called heartbeat bill before 10 weeks. That eliminates South Dakota governor and “best teeth” award winner Kristi Noem. “She has the most extreme positions, which is why some have never taken her seriously,” said a source familiar with the former president’s list. It’s also curtains for Noem’s neighbor, affable billionaire North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, as well as for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the popular governor of Arkansas. “It’s a hard pitch,” a Trump adviser told me, explaining why governors are dropping from VP consideration as Trump embraces a states rights position. “If you’re his VP, you cannot be a distraction.”

The “a-word” issue isn’t great news for Tim Scott, either. Many in Trump’s inner circle have been arguing that enlisting the party’s only Black senator would neutralize concerns among suburban, swing state white women that Trump is racist. And on paper, Scott isn’t all that different from every other Senate Republican who supports Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week national abortion ban. But it’s the way Scott came out of the gate during his failed presidential campaign—leaning hard into a draconian pro-life stance, and calling a federal abortion ban a “moral obligation”—that has alarmed some Trump allies. “When Tim announced for president, they kept asking him about abortion and he gave a lot of shitty answers,” said a source with knowledge of Trump’s deliberations.

As Puck notes, “no Republican can truly take the abortion issue off the table for Trump, who handpicked the conservative justices [who] went on to nuke Roe and set the stage for Arizona’s antebellum court ruling.” But two names have reportedly arisen when it comes to “candidates who might ameliorate the challenge”: Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance. To be clear, neither man is a proponent of reproductive rights; Rubio cosponsored Graham’s national abortion ban bill, and Vance campaigned against the Ohio ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. But Team Trump apparently believes Vance’s “flexible approach to ideology”—read: lack of belief in anything—“is a close match for Trump’s own.” As for Rubio, he has a long, well-documented history of flip-flopping on almost everything.