Former President Donald Trump has confirmed several contenders to be his running mate in the upcoming election cycle.
Trump made the remarks yesterday during a Fox News town hall in Greenville, South Carolina hosted by anchor Laura Ingraham.
Ingraham asked about several prospects that have been raised as potential contenders for months, including biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Fox News contributor and former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
“Are they all on your shortlist?” Ingraham asked.
“They are,” Trump replied.
He acknowledged that, because he only has one term left, “it’s very important” who the vice president is.
He reiterated his past point that his number-one consideration in picking a running mate is who’s capable of being the president should the need arise.
“You would like to get somebody that could help you from the voters’ standpoint,” Trump added. “And honestly, all of those people are good, they’re all good.”
Trump also made clear that one person definitely won’t be appearing on the ballot beside him in November if he becomes the nominee: GOP rival and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.
A few months back, there was a brief stint of rampant speculation that Trump was considering Haley as a running mate. Since then, he’s made clear he’s not considering that, and reiterated that point during the town hall.
Ingraham referenced comments made by Haley earlier the same day.
“Some people used to say I was running because I really wanted to be vice president,“ Haley said. ”I think I’ve pretty well settled that question.”
“Has she settled that question?” Ingraham asked.
“Well, I settled it about three months ago,” Trump quipped in reply.
“She’s not working. Here [in South Carolina], she’s down by 30, 35 points,“ Trump said. ”And everybody knows her. You’re not supposed to lose your home state, that shouldn’t happen anyway.”
Polls have consistently shown that Haley is all but guaranteed to lose in the state she once governed.
According to the most recent RealClearPolitics averages, Trump is leading Haley in the state by over 25 points. Trump has also won every single poll conducted in the state since January 2023 by double-digit margins—a good sign for a candidate who has consistently outperformed polls throughout his political career.
Despite these dire projections, a defiant Haley said yesterday she is not going anywhere
“Some of you—perhaps a few of you in the media—came here today to see if I’m dropping out of the race,” she said in a speech earlier in the day in Greenville, South Carolina. “Well, I’m not. Far from it.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m campaigning every day until the last person votes because I believe in a better America and a brighter future for kids.”
She blasted Republicans who have endorsed Trump, saying they felt pressure to do so even though many privately do not like him but cannot say that out loud.
“I feel no need to kiss the ring,” she said. “I have no fear of Trump’s retribution.”
Haley remarked that she is unafraid to take the tough road to victory and compared her campaign to the biblical story of King David winning over a lion.
Trump’s team fired a preemptive strike against Haley in advance of her speech.
In a campaign memo issued earlier on Tuesday, senior aides Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles projected that Trump would secure the majority of bound delegates in the next 4 weeks—becoming presumptive nominee by around mid-March.
—Joseph Lord and Jackson Richman
SCOTUS REJECTS A HOST OF APPEALS
The Supreme Court issued a list of orders yesterday denying requests to take up various cases, including ones surrounding New York City’s rent control, sanctions on Trump-allied attorneys, a mask mandate, and racial motivations in high school admissions.
Two key Trump cases are still pending before the Court. So far, the justices haven’t issued a decision in Trump’s presidential immunity appeal or released an opinion about the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump is disqualified from appearing on the state’s ballot.
Oral argument in two lower-profile cases about labor arbitration and debit card regulation also made their way to the Court on Tuesday. The justices are set to hear oral argument today regarding the EPA’s highly controversial “Good Neighbor Plan,” an air pollution regulation, as well as cases about bump stocks and social media censorship in the following week.
During the hearing yesterday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered an intriguing question when she asked about the applicability of Chevron, a landmark legal precedent on the scope of agency powers that the Court seems poised to overturn but for which it hasn’t yet announced a decision.
She said that “we had other doctrines that prevented, so, you know, for example, Chevron existed.”
Perhaps by slip of the tongue, she spoke of the doctrine as if had already been overturned by the high court.
It’s unclear whether Justice Jackson had unintentionally spoiled the court’s decision or whether she had simply misspoken.
The high court decided to reject a challenge to a Virginia elite high school’s “race-neutral” admissions practices that allegedly discriminate against Asian American students.
In dissent, conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas had some scathing comments for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which upheld the controversial admissions practice. Describing the appellate decision as “indefensible,” Alito wrote: “The holding below effectively licenses official actors to discriminate against any racial group with impunity as long as that group continues to perform at a higher rate than other groups.”
The court also rejected a challenge to New York’s rent control law. Justice Thomas, in dissent, penned a statement suggesting that the New York City case wasn’t a good vehicle for tackling the issue but that “in an appropriate future case, we should grant certiorari to address this important question.”
Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, Trump-allied attorneys, were rejected by the Supreme Court in their challenge to penalties imposed by the Sixth Circuit. A district court had imposed penalties, later upheld by the court of appeals, on those lawyers and others for bringing an allegedly frivolous lawsuit challenging the 2020 presidential election results in Michigan.
A group of House Republicans were denied additional review by the Supreme Court in their lawsuit over their pay being docked for not following the COVID-19 mask mandate within the House of Representatives. The D.C. Circuit had ruled against the legislators.
—Sam Dorman
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- Biden fundraises in San Fransico, California
- James Biden, the president’s brother, testifies in a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in the Biden impeachment inquiry
- The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) opens. The event held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor just outside of Washington will run through Saturday.
Experts say that the fixation on carbon dioxide ignores the actual drivers of temperature, reports The Epoch Times’ Katie Spence. It’s not that temperature follows CO2, rather it’s vice versa.
The Biden administration tried to dissuade Russia from putting a nuclear weapon in space, according to Politico. This threat caused House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to sound the alarm and warn members of Congress, setting off panic in Washington.
The Democratic Party is allocating funding toward getting favorable judges on state courts, reports The New York Times. This comes as conservatives are the majority on the Supreme Court and the Democrats lag behind the GOP in reshaping the federal judiciary makeup.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis paid for hundreds of dollars worth of Napa Valley wine in cash, reports CNN. This comes as Willis has come under intense scrutiny for having a romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors, Nathan Wade.
