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.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.