With Ted Cruz announcing yesterday that Carly Fiorina will be his running mate in his increasingly difficult path to the GOP presidential nomination, we thought it might be time for Donald Trump to start thinking about who he wants as his vice president.
Here are just a few options:
1) Chris Christie
Following his victory in five states on Tuesday, Trump suggested that he would consider naming New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was standing by his side and trying his best not to look like a hostage, as his running mate.
Trump would have to overlook the Fort Lee highway lane closure scandal, better known as Bridgegate, that weighed down Christie’s unsuccessful presidential campaign.
As we noted before Christie jumped into the presidential race, under his leadership “New Jersey experienced multiple credit downgrades, regular budget shortfalls, a failed pension reform plan, fiscal mismanagement that benefited political donors, anemic job growth, a transit funding scandal and mishandling of Hurricane Sandy recovery money.”
Trump would also have to try to restrain himself from continuing to insult the governor, something he has had a problem doing even after Christie endorsed him.
2) Scott Brown
Trump has also floated former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown as a potential running mate.
“Vice president — hey, that sounds like it could, hey, hey, very good,” Trump said. “Hey, you know what? And he’s central casting. Look at that guy. Central casting.”
Brown, who lost his race for re-election against Elizabeth Warren and later ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, was one of Trump’s most prominent endorsers and media surrogates before the New Hampshire contest.
His colleagues at Fox News — which has frequently run glowing profiles of the former senator — have also encouraged Trump to pick him as his running mate.
Brown has at least one thing in common with Trump: they have both pushed quack medical cures; Trump with his failed multilevel marketing company and Brown with his email list, which once promoted “an outlet that touts shady products like Alzheimer's disease cures and Social Security tricks.” Brown later said that he did not approve of the email although, as Media Matters reports, he also rented his list to a dubious group “promising to show readers a ‘Weird Trick’ that ‘adds $1,000 to Your Social Security Checks!’”
The two also have a tendency to create anti-immigrant conspiracy theories (Brown once warned of Ebola-infected immigrants easily walking across the U.S. border with Mexico), going to great lengths to avoid answering basic questions and creating awkward situations with women.
One problem for Brown, however, is that he is pro-choice, unlike the famously pro-life Donald Trump.
3) Scott DesJarlais
Scott DesJarlais is one of the few members of Congress to endorse Trump, and the Tennessee Republican will surely help Trump win over women voters.
Before running for Congress as a “pro-life” and “pro-family” Republican, “DesJarlais, a physician, pressured a patient who was his mistress to get an abortion. It was later revealed that the pro-life congressman had approved of his first wife having two abortions, and that he’d had sex with at least two patients.” He also had affairs with “three coworkers and a drug representative,” and was later fined for violating medical ethics.
DesJarlais’ ex-wife also accused him of “dry firing a gun outside the Plaintiff's locked bedroom door, [admitting] suicidal ideation, holding a gun in his mouth for three hours, an incident of physical intimidation at the hospital; and previous threatening behavior ... i.e. shoving, tripping, pushing down, etc.”
4) Jeff Sessions
Trump has said that he would like to pick an insider as his vice president, so why not go with his sole Senate endorser and “Washington gatekeeper” Jeff Sessions?
The Alabama Republican helped craft Trump’s plan to deport all undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., as well as his proposal to destroy the Mexican economy by blocking remittances in order to force Mexico to pay for the border wall.
Sessions has also defended Trump’s proposal to ban the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims from entering the U.S. and similarly expressed doubt climate science with his own bizarre reasoning.
5) Mike Huckabee
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has been a relentless defender of Trump throughout the campaign, frequently attacking Ted Cruz while praising the billionaire mogul. Trump even hired Huckabee’s daughter as an adviser after the former governor’s own presidential bid ended.
The two have their differences: While Trump mostly directs his bigotry towards immigrants and Muslims, Huckabee keeps LGBT people as his main target.
While the folksy Southern Baptist minister may not share many of Trump’s personality traits, he does at least share Trump’s proclivity for anti-Obama conspiracy theories and patronizing language towards women .
6) Ben Carson
After endorsing Trump’s candidacy, Ben Carson has emerged as one of his worst campaign surrogates.
Nonetheless, there are numerousreports that Carson isactively lobbying for a slot on the ticket.
Carson, like Trump, has a gift for grifting and making mystifying, bigoted statements.
Trump may be wary, however, because Carson believes that God was behind his own, failed presidential campaign.
Bonus: Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin is one of Trump’s earliest endorsers and most loyal surrogates, thanking God for his candidacy and hailing him for standing up to “all that petty, punk-ass, little thuggery stuff.” She even defended him when he attacked John McCain, who named Palin as his running mate in 2008, for being a prisoner of war, saying that Trump is a hero for criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of immigration and economic policy.
It was also at a Trump rally where Palin suggested that President Obama shares some of the blame for her son’s arrest for domestic assault.
Trump has said that he would consider appointing Palin to a position in his administration because “she really is somebody who knows what’s happening and she’s a special person, she’s really a special person and I think people know that.”
Seeing that she already ran for vice president once before, Palin is clearly ready for the campaign.
After all, what could go wrong?
