Via Curt Mills of the Spectator (US), there is “well-placed chatter” in Washington that Trump is considering replacing Vice President Mike Pence on the 2020 Presidential ticket with none other than Fox New’s Tucker Carlson:
“Will President Trump switch up his ticket in 2020? The Wall Street Journal editorial page, bastion of the establishment right, certainly hopes so. A little over a week ago, it called for former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to replace the dutiful Mike Pence as vice president. But there’s well-placed chatter in Washington that suggests the president will take a different route. Trump does indeed feel he needs VP change, but it is not Nikki Haley he is considering. It is Fox News host Tucker Carlson.”
Trump must resist the urge to appoint Nikki Haley as VP. He beat Hillary without a woman on the ticket and he can beat whoever the Democrats throw at him in 2020 without a woman on the ticket again. Resist the urge to virtue signal and play the Democrats’ identity politics game. You will never win.
They will never stop calling you a sexist or a misogynist because you appoint a woman as your VP. In fact they’ll just start calling Haley herself a sexist. They don’t care.
Republicans tend to play this ridiculous game where they decry identity politics at every opportunity, yet turn around and want credit for going out of their way to base hiring decisions on little more than a candidate’s identity (i.e., race, gender, sexual orientation).
Republicans: “Identity politics is terrible for our country and wrong! The job should go to the best available candidate, period, regardless of their identity!”
Also Republicans: “Give me credit for hiring this woman solely because she’s a woman!”
Republicans both decry and play the identity politics game simultaneously. Stop trying to play a game that is designed by the left specifically for you to lose.
Let Democrats be the party that takes only race, gender and sexual orientation into consideration for hiring decisions. Let them be the ones who consider someone a good candidate merely because they’re black, or Hispanic, or female, or gay.
We’re supposed to be the ones who don’t think gender or race or sexual orientation alone qualify someone for office.
We have no obligation to play by their rules. They will never give us credit even if we do.
“Carlson, who just turned 50, was with the president on his trip to the Korean demilitarized zone over the weekend. His interview with 45 will air Monday night. This all while Trump’s national security adviser and fierce Carlson foe, John R. Bolton, was exiled, literally, to outer Mongolia. In some ways, Trump has already made the move, ex officio.”
I’ll link the Trump-Carlson talk at the bottom, but I didn’t know Trump sent Bolton off to Mongolia while he visited North Korea with Tucker. It’s true, though. Hopefully it’s a sign that Tucker is in and the neocons are out.
“Here’s why it would make sense for the president to just go all the way— and name Carlson his running mate.
First, Tucker gets Trump. The duo have personal chemistry far exceeding the rapport that Pence or Haley enjoy. Haley bitterly opposed Trump during the 2016 primary and a former senior administration official has long informed me that her hiring during the transition was a ‘keep your enemies closer’ affair. In Carlson, Trump would get to anoint an heir apparent he actually likes.”
Yes yes yes. Trump owes Nikki Haley nothing. She opposed him in 2016, and I’m sure I’m not the only Trump supporter who still to this day questions her loyalty and motives.
Where Tucker would bolster the MAGA agenda, Nikki Haley would undermine it.
“Second, Tucker gets Trumpism, and Trumpism gets Tucker. He is eminence grise of a new intellectual right befitting the Trump era, and appeals to people who have started to become disgruntled in President Trump.
It’s been speculated before that Carlson might enter a 2024 race, but Trump might want to bring him into his fold sooner than that. Trump often complains of ideological clashes with his own officials. That’s partly why he already relies on a shadow cabinet, anchored by Carlson, as proved by last week’s called-off strikes on Iran.”
No more “shadow cabinet.” Make it official with Tucker.
“Trump in his first term has had to appoint Bush-era officials who have no idea what drives Trump’s movement. Carlson knows Trumpworld far better.”
Not only does Tucker know “Trumpworld” very well, he’s a part of it. He’s the real deal. He actually believes in MAGA and America First. The guy just gets it.
“Third, it would work. As evidenced by his conquering of Bill O’Reilly’s time slot on Fox, Carlson is a fearsome debater and fearless operator. Far from being ‘just a talk show host,’ as he often says of himself, Carlson is becoming a political force. Close friends of his say his recent bestselling book, Ship of Fools, represented a fairly comprehensive political platform: ‘a manifesto, of sorts,’ says one.”
Tucker would kill it on the campaign trail. He’d be unstoppable in debates. And apparently he’s already been thinking about how to turn his views and ideas into a real political platform, meaning he’s ready to make the jump from commentator to politician.
“Pressed on the matter of presidential politics before, Carlson, like any savvy pol, has not explicitly ruled it out. Inside Fox News, those close to Carlson insist he’s unlikely to ever pull the trigger. But in the apparatus of devotees in Washington he’s cultivated, Carlson commands the respect of infantrymen waiting for a returning general. ‘He’s the guy,’ a prominent conservative close to Carlson told me.”
Great analogy. The MAGA movement is begging him to take up the mantle and lead, like General Washington in the American Revolution.
“Carlson would refocus a Trump campaign that’s straying in a quixotic direction: one which has decided it wants to win over the Sun Belt states, never mind the Rust Belt that delivered the presidency.
More than anything: it’d be fun — which shouldn’t be dismissed. It would drive CNN and MSNBC and left-liberal America completely wild.
It would put a rogue element back into Trump’s otherwise professional-yet-plodding 2020 campaign. It would provide precisely the wild energy that won Trump the presidency in 2016. Carlson could give Trump his mojo back.
If Trump is going to continue to get flak for making Carlson his peacetime consigliere, he may as well formalize the arrangement.”
This would be great for a number of reasons. I fully endorse this idea:
- Tucker is now the voice, and arguably the soul, of the MAGA movement. While Sean Hannity beats the drums for war with Iran, Tucker Carlson has for two years been calling out the neocon chicanery trying to push Trump to war. Tucker was skeptical from the start of the supposed Assad chemical weapons incident, and he has been one of the strongest voices against war with Iran. Tucker is firmly in-tune with the American people. He knows the last thing the American people want is another war, but the Political Establishment does and it’s trying to push Trump into one. Trump has been doing a great job resisting the neocons around him, but Tucker as VP would make it even more unlikely we end up in any Swamp-orchestrated wars.
- It’s no secret that Trump has been seriously isolated in Washington since taking office. This is because there are very few true MAGA Nationalists who could get confirmed to high-level government jobs. I’ve remarked in the past that Trump himself could only get into government by running for President, in other words by the American people themselves putting him there. He couldn’t get confirmed to a Cabinet post by the Senate. In order to get genuine MAGA Nationalists into government, we need to take the decision out of the Swamp’s hands and put it directly to the American people at the ballot box. The Senate would never allow a true MAGA Man like Tucker Carlson to be appointed to a high-level government post, meaning the only way to get him into government is by putting him there ourselves at the ballot box.
- Tucker would steer Trump in the right direction. While Trump’s White House is filled with globalists and neocons and Establishment parasites because they’re the only ones “qualified” for those top jobs, Tucker would be the voice of the MAGA movement in Trump’s ear at virtually all times. He would be able to steer Trump in the correct direction whenever the Neocons and Globalists come to the President with one of their new schemes. The Swamp has been trying (and in many ways succeeding) to commandeer the Trump presidency. Tucker would bring an end to that quickly.
- Tucker has his priorities in line: he knows what Trump’s base wants and he will be able to effectively steer Trump towards those ends. Currently, Trump is surrounded by Swamp Creatures who are trying to steer him away from his base. Outside of war with Iran, another major–major–issue Tucker would push Trump in the right direction on is Big Tech censorship. Lately Trump seems to be paying more attention to the fact that his supporters are being silenced and deplatformed online, but Tucker Carlson would make that issue front-and-center for the President. Tucker would be Trump’s direct line to the millions of Americans who rallied to him in 2016, something Trump has been sorely missing since taking office.
- Naming Tucker as his running mate for 2020 would not only be of immense benefit to Trump in terms of implementing his political agenda and staying on the right track, it would also rally his base immeasurably. This move would make a major splash, in a good way. Excitement levels on our side would go through the roof. Trump-Tucker 2020 would be the MAGA Dream Ticket. It would be like pairing LeBron James with Kawhi Leonard.
For those of you who don’t believe this is possible because Tucker Carlson is just a cable news personality with no experience in government: hello? Did you forget where Donald Trump himself came from?
Trump needs a true ally by his side for the long fight ahead–for both the 2020 election and his second term. Trump cannot do it alone. There is no better person than Tucker Carlson for this role. We need Tucker, representing the MAGA movement and the American patriots who put Trump in the White House, to be installed as President Trump’s right-hand-man ASAP.
Plus, as mentioned in the article, this would obviously set Tucker up beautifully for a run at the Presidency in 2024.
But that’s a long way off. We still have to focus on 2020.
Now, all that said, do I think it’s likely Trump will make this move? No, not particularly.
To my knowledge it’s never been done in modern American history. In 1972, Democratic nominee George McGovern originally chose Thomas Eagleton to be his running mate, but reports came out that Eagleton underwent electroshock therapy to treat his depression earlier in life, and eventually the controversy caused McGovern to replace him with Sargent Shriver. Today is a different situation because it would not be a scandal forcing Pence off the ticket, but rather a straight-up political decision in favor of a better running mate.
I think the only time a President ever replaced his Vice President was Lincoln ditching his first-term VP Hannibal Hamlin for Andrew Johnson in 1864. This would be a similar type of situation, of course minus the Civil War backdrop.
So it’s a really big deal for a President to switch running mates–with or without scandal. It would be more or less unprecedented.
That’s why I’m skeptical that Trump will actually go through with this.
However, if there was any presidential candidate with the balls to make a move like this, it’s Donald Trump. So don’t count it out entirely. Just because it’s unprecedented doesn’t mean it can’t happen. There’s a first time for everything.
FDR had 3 different vice presidents.
Tucker for VP, for SURE!!!!