GOP Veepstakes: Race to Self-Abase

Warning: You will want to scrub yourself in the shower after reading this article.

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WHO WILL BE DONALD TRUMP’S running mate? Lots of ambitious Republican are angling for the job, sucking up at Mar-a-Lago and on national TV. Normally, contenders for the vice presidency would showcase their accomplishments, their communication skills, or their ability to carry a key state. But in Trump’s case, the rules are different. He’s an authoritarian crook, and the contestants are competing to show how far they’d go to defend his crimes and his abuse of power.

Here’s where the top contenders currently stand, from the back of the pack to the front.

6. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida

Last year, as the presidential campaign was underway, Nikki Haley’s husband, Michael Haley, deployed to Africa under orders from the South Carolina National Guard. In February, Trump—who notoriously avoided service during the Vietnam War—jeered: “Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.”

The next day, when Rubio was asked about Trump’s jeer, he shrugged it off and indicated that nothing Trump said would cost him Rubio’s support. “Trump gives as good as he gets,” the senator told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “One of the things I’m not going to do any longer is, like, respond to every comment Donald Trump makes and say, ‘Oh, you still support him?’ I do.”

Rubio gets points for this servility, but he’s not entirely reliable. For instance, in a March 24 ABC interview, he said that while some defendants involved in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol had been “egregiously charged,” those who committed violence should be prosecuted. And although Rubio agreed with Trump that presidents deserved legal immunity, he said this shouldn’t apply to “common” crimes such as homicide. These limited concessions make Rubio less attractive than other potential picks who are willing to go further.

5. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota

On April 21, CNN’s Dana Bash pressed Noem about the New York hush-money case against Trump. She asked the governor: “If Donald Trump is convicted in this trial, will you still support him in November?” Noem said she would: “If my choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, every single day of the week, yes, I will support Donald Trump.” Noem dismissed the criminal cases and the civil jury verdicts against Trump as meritless attempts “to weaponize our judicial system.”

When Noem was asked about Mike Pence’s refusal on January 6th to reject electors on Trump’s behalf, she said Pence had “failed Donald Trump since that day” by “constantly criticizing” him. But she didn’t condemn Pence’s decision on the electors, and she called January 6th “a day we hope we never see again here in this country.” These remarks may have euthanized Noem as a potential running mate, even before she came under fire for talking about shooting her dog.

4. Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota

Burgum is cagey in his defense of Trump. Instead of saying none of Trump’s criminal cases matter, he focuses on technical objections to the hush-money charges. Instead of saying the 2020 election was rigged, he complains about “irregularities,” such as mass mailing of ballots, which he says created “opportunities for mischief.” He ducks the question of whether Pence did the right thing on January 6th, and he says Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election results weren’t much different from Democratic challenges to the 2000 and 2016 election results.

Burgum is wrong: The 2000 and 2016 elections, unlike 2020, were conceded by the losers. He’s also wrong when he accuses journalists of “falsely claiming that there was Russian interference” in the 2016 election. That claim that has been verified in investigations by the U.S. intelligence community, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

But willingness to fudge or lie, particularly about Russia, counts in Burgum’s favor as a potential Trump running mate. He also gets extra credit for excusing Trump’s bigotry. On Jan. 21, ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked Burgum:

Donald Trump has taken to referring to his opponent Nikki Haley by her given name—a mangled version of that, Nimarata—the kind of thing he did with Barack Obama, using his middle name, Hussein. He’s also . . . reposted false conspiracy theories, saying she is not eligible to run for president because her Indian immigrant parents were not yet American citizens. She was born in South Carolina.

Burgum replied that Trump’s attack on Haley was no different from President Joe Biden’s criticisms of Trump. “This is all in the norm . . . for politics in our country,” said Burgum. That level of moral indifference could make Burgum a strong choice to stand beside Trump as the former president targets ethnic or religious groups in the 2024 campaign or in a second term.

3. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina

On Jan. 28, after a civil jury found that Trump had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, Raddatz asked Scott whether the verdict gave Scott “any pause in your support” for the former president. Scott batted the question away, scoffing that Democrats who support Joe Biden “don’t pause when they think about Hunter Biden.” Three weeks later, on Face the Nation, Scott refused to say whether as vice president he would have the right to reject electors, calling it a “hypothetical question.”

Then, this Sunday, Scott upped his VP game. On Meet the Press, he was asked about Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the 2024 election results. Scott replied that this wouldn’t be an issue, because Trump would win the election. The moderator, Kristen Welker, followed up:

Welker: Will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024, bottom line?

Scott: At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump. . . .

Welker: Yes or no? Will you accept the election results of 2024, no matter who wins?

Scott: That is my statement.

Welker: But is it—just yes or no? Will you accept the election results of 2024?

Scott: I look forward to President Trump being the 47th president. . . .

Welker: Will you commit to accepting the election results?

Scott: This is why so many—this is why so many Americans believe that NBC is an extension of the Democrat party. . . .

Welker: I’m asking you as a potential VP nominee, will you accept to commit to the election results in this election cycle, no matter who wins? Just simply yes or no.

Scott: I expect President Trump to win the next election. And, listen, I’m not going to answer your hypothetical question. . . .

The transcript doesn’t do justice to this exchange. In the video, you can see Scott doggedly refusing to concede two basic rules of democracy—the possibility of defeat, and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power—because he knows those concessions would antagonize Trump.

2. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York

Stefanik earns a top-two spot for three reasons. First, she voted on January 6th to overturn the 2020 election, and she has signaled that as vice president, she would have used the power of that office to block implementation of the results. “I voted not to certify the state of Pennsylvania,” she told Welker earlier this year, because “in Pennsylvania and other states . . . there [were] unconstitutional acts circumventing the state legislature and unilaterally changing election law.”

When Welker asked Stefanik whether she would vote to certify the results after this November’s election, Stefanik answered: “We will see if this is a legal and valid election.” A few weeks later, Stefanik told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that if she had been vice president on January 6th, “I would not have done what Mike Pence did.”

Second, Stefanik has indicated that her threshold for declaring an election stolen and invalid is extremely low. She told Welker that in New York, “We are seeing Democrats try to steal the election and illegally gerrymander congressional districts that we fairly won.” Stefanik explicitly likened this gerrymandering—which is cynical but ubiquitous in politics—to “the unconstitutional overreach we saw at the national level in 2020.”

Third, Stefanik proudly embraces Trump’s allegation that people convicted of crimes on January 6th are “hostages,” not lawful prisoners, of the U.S. government. When Welker asked about “the people who stormed the Capitol,” Stefanik replied: “I have concerns about the treatment of January 6th hostages.” And when Collins asked Stefanik whether she distinguished the “criminal defendants” of January 6th from genuine hostages—“people who were raped and kidnapped [in] Gaza”—Stefanik chose not to affirm that distinction. Instead, Stefanik said the important distinction was between people who were prosecuted for crimes on January 6th and those who weren’t prosecuted for violence in Black Lives Matter riots.

1. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio

Vance dismisses all jury verdicts against Trump, past and future, on the grounds that they’re in “left-wing jurisdictions.” Like Stefanik, he says if had been vice president on January 6th, “I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors. And I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.”

What sets Vance above Stefanik, for now, is his stated willingness to defy the Supreme Court. In September 2021, Vance declared that in a second term, Trump should

Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. . . . And when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, “The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”¹

On Feb. 4, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Vance about that declaration. Stephanopoulos pointed out that the Constitution “says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings.”

Vance disagreed. He argued that although “the Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings . . . if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.” But Stephanopoulos noted that Vance’s declaration went well beyond generals. Vance was implying that any Supreme Court ruling constraining presidential authority over the federal bureaucracy could be ignored.

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WHAT LOOMS OVER the VP contest, above all, is the specter of Pence. In the weeks after the 2020 election, Trump pulled every lever—Republican governors, state officials, the Justice Department, and the Supreme Court—in a desperate bid to stay in power. One after another, the institutions defied him. Trump’s last hope was his vice president. And when that man refused to betray his oath, Trump realized that in choosing a running mate who had a shred of integrity, he had made a fatal mistake. He is determined not to repeat that mistake.

1. There is considerable debate among historians about whether President Jackson really uttered something like this famous phrase.