OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made his decision on being the vice presidential pick for former President Donald Trump if he should take the Republican presidential nomination as anticipated.
DeSantis was on a phone call with supporters on which reporters for The New York Post were present where he said “People were mentioning me [as a potential vice president]. I am not doing that,” The Post reported.
“I know some people are really actively seeking it. It seems to me, just from watching kind of the body language and stuff, that you have a handful of folks who seem to be auditioning for it,” the Florida governor said.
“I think my criteria [for running mate] was different than what probably Donald Trump’s criteria will be,” he said.
“My criteria was, basically, I need someone who can do the job if it came to that, and I would have been the third-youngest president elected so chances are, actuarily I would probably be in pretty good shape, but you never know what else can happen, it’s happened before,” he said.
“So you need someone who can just go in, day one, no problem, they can do the job,” the governor said.
“I’m not sure that those are necessarily going to be the criteria that Donald Trump uses. I think he’s going to probably use different criteria. I’ve heard that they are looking more at identity politics. I think that’s a mistake. I think you should just focus on who you think the best person for the job would be,” he said.
He went on to explain that he believes there were people in the Trump campaign who he had fired that had “an ax to grind” with him and blamed them for the attacks on him during the campaign, then explained why he believes he did not win any states.
“The dynamic of the race is not that they were attacking me and Republican voters all of a sudden didn’t like me,” the governor said. “That wasn’t it at all. The dynamics of the race were, he kept getting indicted and he drew more support out of sympathy for that, and then he had the conservative media that basically rallied to him and made it where a lot of voters thought his nomination was inevitable.
“In Iowa, the reason why turnout was so low,” he said, was because “a lot of conservative voters … had just tuned out the process because they thought he was inevitable… That was our responsibility to try and change that dynamic. That’s why we were on the ground so much in Iowa.”
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, took a swipe back at the Florida governor when asked for comment by The Post.
“Ron DeSantis failed miserably in his presidential campaign and does not have a voice in selecting the next Vice President of the United States,” she said to The Post. “Rather than throw cheap shots from afar, Ron should focus on what he can do to fire Joe Biden and Make America Great Again.”
Trump did indicate that DeSantis was on his shortlist for vice president in a Fox News Town Hall this week.
“The audience has been asked who they think would be a good choice and various names came up,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said to the former president during the Town Hall. “One of them was of course Vivek Ramaswamy, he’s made a big splash. Ron DeSantis, who’s making an appearance today in South Carolina we just found out. Obviously, Tim Scott, Byron Donalds, and a big presence here for Tulsi Gabbard.”
“Are they all on your shortlist?” the host said, to which Trump responded, “They are.”
