I've Never Covered a Veepstakes This Embarrassing
The pandering of Trump’s vice presidential hopefuls would be funny if not so dangerous.
Walter Mondale’s 1984 vice-presidential selection – the first one I covered – broke conventional rules for privacy and discretion.
As the Democratic presidential nominee, Mondale used the process to court important constituencies as he considered a historically diverse roster of contenders. So, one by one, he marched them – men and women, white, Black, and Hispanic – past TV cameras for interviews in his suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, home.
Some Democratic colleagues found it unseemly. “A PR parade,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson lamented. “A little bit like pandering,” scolded then-Sen. Gary Hart at the time.
If only they knew what vice-presidential pandering would become.
As with so much else in the Donald Trump era, his 2024 veepstakes has shattered precedent and erased dignity from its participants. Instead of the Republican nominee pandering to voters, the VP wannabees pander to the nominee with a slavishness that defies parody.
From his New York hush money trial to Capitol Hill, from TV studios to social media, the rumored Republican contenders flatter Trump, mimic Trump, even dress like Trump. They jettison independent judgment and sprint away from past criticism of the former president like a puppy fleeing Kristi Noem’s trigger finger.
The spectacle would be merely funny were it not also dangerous. Their ambition further undermines public faith in the rule of law, heightens the danger law enforcement agents face from deranged Trump supporters, and plants the seeds for another insurrection following this November’s election.
Behold the supplicants.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, for example, once accurately described Trump as a “con artist.” He “spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy,” Rubio said in 2016.
Now he follows Trump’s direction in rejecting a bipartisan border security compromise, then uses the absence of border security provisions as an excuse to oppose aid to Ukraine in its war with Trump’s ally Russia. Rubio won’t commit to accepting the 2024 election results if Trump loses again.
Erstwhile author and current Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance once scorned Trump as perhaps “America’s Hitler.” “I was wrong,” he now insists. He says he wouldn’t have followed the Constitution and immediately certified the 2020 election results as then-Vice President Mike Pence did at great personal risk.
Donning the red-tie-white-shirt-blue suit Trump uniform, Vance has joined the parade seeking to discredit the legal system outside the hush money trial. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who once slammed Trump as a “whack job,” upped the servility ante by filing an ethics complaint against trial judge Juan Merchan. When a Fox News anchor explored her flip-flop, Stefanik called the very question “a disgrace.”
Belligerent Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a late riser on the VP list, claims baselessly that Biden himself drummed up Trump’s felony indictments in an un-American attempt “to lock up his political opponent.” Trump’s insurrection notwithstanding, Cotton alleged on social media “It’s Joe Biden who is a direct threat to our democracy.”
Mild-mannered North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a wealthy former software executive whose campaign for this year’s nomination went nowhere, uses a subtler approach. Having previously forsworn the possibility of a business relationship with Trump, he now avers that working with the Trump administration as a governor was like “having a beautiful breeze at your back.”
None has climbed higher on the Everest of dishonesty than Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, who, like Vance and Burgum, attended the hush-money trial in uniform. Echoing a particularly incendiary Trump lie, Donalds insinuated the Biden administration had prepared to kill the former president during the FBI’s search for unlawfully retained classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. (Donalds was making fantastical reference to boilerplate language laying out standard FBI protocols.)
Noem, the South Dakota governor, boasted of an assassination that she actually carried out. In a new memoir, she recounted shooting her family’s hard-to-train puppy Cricket as evidence of her willingness to perform “difficult, messy and ugly” tasks. That might be too aberrant even for Trump.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott abases himself with expressions of affection, not violence. When he endorsed Trump over his home-state former Gov. Nikki Haley earlier this year, he prompted Trump to observe, “You must really hate her.”
“I just love you,” Scott replied. He won’t commit to accepting the election results either.
Haley completed her own demeaning journey last week. After denouncing Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, Haley joined his administration as the ambassador to the UN. After Jan. 6, she harshly condemned him again.
Later she vowed not to seek the presidency in 2024 if Trump did. Ultimately, she became his last surviving primary rival, deriding him as “toxic,” “totally unhinged,” and “not qualified” to be president again.
Last week, Haley announced that she’d be voting for Trump.
Once, Haley seemed an ideal running-mate prospect, positioned to help Trump win back suburban women voters who fled the GOP. That may have turned into too far a reach.
Yet Haley had no choice but to grovel for something far more modest: the possibility of a future role in Republican politics. The GOP has fallen so far that GOP politicians must pander to Trump for even that.
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Typical fascist leader-worship. Expect North Korean-level performative grief when this monster finally dies.
It's scary- what is happening in American politics today.