Who Will Donald Trump Choose As His Veep And How Will The Selection Process Look Like?

Donald Trump and his supporters will expect nothing less than undying loyalty from Trump’s vice president pick as election day nears. The reason for this is their and their leader’s experience with Mike Pence.

Mike Pence experienced that under Donald Trump operating as US vice president is not an easy job and harder than usual as evidenced by the events of January 6 Capitol Hill riots. Insurrectionists descended on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, they had a specific target in mind the outgoing vice president. They built a wooden gallows, and called out for him by name: Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! As the extensive congressional hearings into the insurrection later documented, the threats were not hollow. One informant told FBI investigators that if given the chance, certain far-right insurrectionists would have tried to kill him, writes Emma Shortis, a senior fellow at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University in a piece for the Conversation.

The federal investigators said the rioters were drawn to the Capitol by Trump, who had just lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. They were after Trump’s VP because, as one later claimed, he had betrayed Trump by not refusing to certify the election results.

Donald Trump is relishing the media attention his hunt for his veep is getting. He has teased who would be his running mates several times on prime time shows earlier this year.

Shortis pointed out that Pence was chosen to lead as Trump’s second-in-command because of his perceived weakness with evangelical voters. The evangelical voters are a major vote bank for the Republican Party and this election season, too, they have backed Trump.

Now with that electoral group covered, Trump may have to focus on Shortis called the former president’s ‘race and woman’ problem. “He should choose a VP candidate who can address at least one of those concerns,” Shortis writes.

In the first category, the leading candidates appear to be two men who ran against Trump for this year’s nomination Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy. Scott a South Carolinian that Bloomberg has dubbed Trump’s New Black Best Friend is the only Black Republican in the Senate. He has certainly indicated he is keen for the job, professing his love for Trump.

Ramaswamy has also presented himself as the newer, shinier Trump. In one memorable moment in the debates, he was first to raise his hand when the candidates were asked who would still support Trump if he is convicted of a crime. Ramaswamy also quickly endorsed Trump when he dropped out.

But there is no indication Trump considers race to be a problem for his candidacy in fact, quite the opposite.

However, race may not matter to Donald Trump because he is campaigning by leaning in to increasingly extreme racist rhetoric. Trump has said on several occasions that immigrants in the United States illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Trump pledged at a November rally in New Hampshire that he would “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

Hence, if Trump chooses a non-white veep, many of his supporters would baulk at the selection.

Shortis points out that a conservative woman might makes sense because Trump may have a problem with women as evidenced by the appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, which subsequently led to the overturning of Roe v Wade.

Among the leading women Republican VP candidates are Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, and Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota. Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Green is often added to this list and she does wear her Trump loyalty on her sleeve like Ramaswamy, Scott, Stefanik and Noem.

Trump is generally pleased with such public professions of loyalty and with MTG it is likely that he will have to share the spotlight which he does not like to do.

Trump might choose an unconventional, wildcard candidate, rejecting advice from what he deems as ‘political establishment’, who would actually be able to rein in his impulses.

His campaign is now predominantly driven by a thirst for vengeance against individuals he perceives as obstructing his progress and as evidenced by his last tenure it has been seen that the former US president has consistently demonstrated a disregard for conventional political norms and strategies.