- Top Republicans have declared Trump to be the GOP’s presumptive nominee.
- The former president will now face competing pressures to find his new running mate.
- Trump has a lot to choose from when it comes to either former rivals or MAGA allies.
Former President Donald Trump and his allies want to turn the page to the general election.
His double-digit win in New Hampshire Tuesday night and his strength in the remaining early states effectively means former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is running out of options. She’ll also have to grapple with the reality that top GOP officials increasingly want the primary to be over.
This leaves one major decision left for Trump: selecting a running mate. True, such selections normally occur far later in the calendar season. But the story of this entire primary, besides not being much of a story at all, is how it has thrown out the traditional playbook. There’s also some budding pressure for Trump to make his pick, so Republicans can turn their focus toward the general election.
Trump is no longer the political neophyte he was when he tapped then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to join him in July 2015. He has strengthened his grip on the GOP after a hostile takeover and the systematic targeting of most of the remaining old-guard members.
It doesn’t mean this decision will be easier.
Pence has described how Trump endangered his family on January 6, 2021, as then-president continued to lash out at the nation’s No. 2 even as rioters stormed the Capitol. There’s a long history of presidential neglect and disrespect toward the vice presidency. John Nance Garner, FDR’s first VP, famously deemed the post a “warm bucket of spit.” Needless to say, Trump’s treatment of Pence before and during the Capitol riot vastly exceeds any of that.
Then again, many Republicans who expressed outrage during the siege of the US Capitol have later come around to endorsing Trump. And in the modern era, there are few greater perches to launch or relaunch your national ambitions than to be the highest-ranking apprentice.
