Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
Now that Donald Trump is officially the presumptive Republican nominee, he's getting ready for the general election. In just the last couple of weeks, he's scratched a lot off his to-do list.
He installed new leadership, including his daughter-in-law, at the Republican National Committee and negotiated a joint-fundraising agreement with the party. His campaign is in talks with his former campaign manager and pardon recipient Paul Manafort to run the GOP convention. And his lawyers have successfully delayed the most serious legal threats he faces while getting a nearly half-billion-dollar bond in his fraud case reduced to a more manageable $175 million.
Yep, everything is shaping up as well as can be expected for Trump's fourth run for president (including his widely forgotten and short-lived 2000 effort ). The last big thing on his list: Pick a running mate.
In case you hadn't heard, his former vice president, Mike Pence, is not available.
Picking a running mate is a lot like buying a car. The first question is, "What do you need it for?" If you need to haul around a bunch of kids, a minivan might be best. If you want to show off, a sports car makes more sense.
Veep picks are for shoring up weaknesses or reinforcing strengths. Trump picked Pence in 2016 because he needed to reassure social conservatives and evangelicals. Biden chose Kamala Harris because he believed (wrongly, in my opinion) that he needed a Black woman on the ticket.
Sometimes the weaknesses have less to do with particular constituencies than with the perceived deficiencies of the presidential nominee. George W. Bush and Barack Obama respectively tapped Dick Cheney and Joe Biden to add decades of political experience to tickets headed by relatively young and inexperienced nominees.
So what does Trump need in a running mate this time around? His claims of uniting the GOP notwithstanding, he needs to deal with the reality that a quarter to a third of the party backed Nikki Haley (and other alternatives) in the primaries.
One way to do that is to win those voters back. Another is to replace them with supporters who haven't traditionally voted Republican, including working-class Black and Latino voters. A third option: Cobble together chunks from columns A and B.
The question is, can a running mate help him do any of that? Trump is a known quantity, with 100% name identification. The idea that a sidekick could change voters' opinions about him seems implausible.
Unlike in 2016, Trump may not have reason to shore up portions of the base with this decision. The voters Pence helped bring into Trump's coalition are now for the most part fully loyal to him. Those who aren't won't change their minds based on a potential veep.
Hence my skepticism that picking a woman would shore up Trump's weaknesses with female voters. Women who don't like Trump, or who are highly motivated by the abortion issue, aren't likely to be swayed by a female running mate.
There's also the matter of Trump's personal preferences. He now values blind loyalty and even blinder sycophancy more than electoral appeal. He's convinced that he's popular, and he wants someone to hype his greatness, not highlight his weaknesses.
Fortunately for Trump, there's no shortage of candidates who meet those criteria. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who implored voters not to vote for a "con man" like Trump in 2016, now says he would be "honored" to be his No. 2.
Picking Rubio would make a lot of political sense. He's a gifted and extremely flexible politician who could appeal to both college-educated suburbanites and working-class and Latino voters.
But I think Trump and his advisers understand that if he is elected, he could very easily be impeached again. In that light, selecting a conventionally reassuring politician as his constitutional understudy is risky. If removing Trump from office would result in a President Rubio -- or even a President Tim Scott -- a lot of Republicans might take that bargain. Also, Trump doesn't want another Pence -- a politician who, when truly tested by a constitutional crisis, sided with the Constitution.
What I believe Trump wants is a Renfield to his Dracula -- a toady who is wholly subservient to his needs and desires. Such a creature -- like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example -- would not only campaign the way Trump wants but would also make the price of removing him from the White House too scary to contemplate.
Greene herself might be too much of a liability to make the cut, but I suspect he will be drawn to a pliant enabler who is frightening enough to backstop his presidency while not so outlandish as to cost him the election. Nancy Mace, stay near your phone.
First posted March 27, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.