Donald Trump is “open” to Vivek Ramaswamy as vice president: It was said often that the first presidential debate, which Donald Trump skipped, was about the candidates auditioning for the vice presidency. Now, Trump is reportedly open to one particular candidate.
Trump ‘Open’ To Vivek Ramaswamy As Vice President
The first Republican presidential debate of the cycle, which took place a week ago, was missing the race’s clear frontrunner, Donald Trump. Therefore, there was a sense that many of the people on stage were auditioning to be Trump’s vice presidential pick.
Clearly, Mike Pence will not be vice president again, and Chris Christie is likely safely out of the running as well.
But some candidates, like Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Vivek Ramaswamy, have been so muted in their criticism of Trump that they’ve often been floated as potential vice presidents.
After a debate performance in which Ramaswamy took up a great deal of the oxygen, there is a report that Trump is “open” to the possibility of naming the businessman his running mate.
According to Axios, Trump praised Ramaswamy in a recent podcast interview with Glenn Beck.
“He’s a very, very, very intelligent person. He’s got good energy, and he could be some form of something,” Trump said in the Beck interview of Ramaswamy. “I tell you, I think he’d be very good.”
“Well, I think he’s great. Look, anybody that said I’m the best president in a generation … I have to like a guy like that,” Trump said in the Beck interview, citing a statement made in the debate by Ramaswamy. At another point in the debate, Ramaswamy vowed that he would pardon Trump, should he be elected president.
Trump also, however, had a warning for his young rival.
“He’s starting to get out there a little bit. He’s getting a little bit controversial,” Trump said, in advice that he has not followed for a moment for his entire political career. “I got to tell him: ‘Be a little bit careful. Some things you have to hold in just a little bit, right?'”
Ramaswamy did say, in early August, that he would decline any offer to be the vice presidential nominee.
“I’m not interested in a different position in the government,” Ramaswamy said in a Fox News interview, as cited at the time by Politico. “Frankly, I’d drive change through the private sector sooner than becoming number two or three in the federal government.”
More on Vivek
Ramaswamy, this week, hinted that he would like Elon Musk to advise him if he becomes president.
This just shows that the 2024 Republican presidential race has a dynamic like no other. There is a frontrunner who is far ahead of the other candidates, and those other candidates are seemingly defined by voters entirely by their reaction to Trump.
So we have some candidates in the race – especially Haley and Ramaswamy — who are frequently praising their opponents to the skies, while others, especially Christie, are running on an anti-Trump platform.
Others, including Pence and DeSantis, are trying to split the difference, and therefore failing to gain much traction in the race. Neither of the latter two candidates has yet cracked how to talk about Trump’s indictments while helping themselves.
If the main criteria of the race are who is the most pro-Trump and who defends Trump the loudest, it’s not possible that anyone but Trump can win.
The New York Times’s Thomas Edsall, last week, looked at why DeSantis, in particular, has had so little success challenging Trump, asking experts that question.
“Trump’s speech style… adeptly channels the talk traditions of blue-collar men who pride themselves on not having to suck up and self-edit to get ahead, which is the way they see professionals’ traditions of decorum,” Joan C. Williams of the University of California Law School-San Francisco told Edsall. “Also Trump is fun while DeSantis is a drip,” she added.
“He’s the Yale and Harvard guy now complaining about intellectuals and elites,” David Bateman, a Cornell professor, told the Times. “He’s talking about wokism and critical race theory when no one knows what those are (even Trump noted no one can define woke, though he yells against it himself). When he tries to be as visceral as Trump, he just comes off as weird.”
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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