By Jennifer Odell
3:00pm PDT, Apr 27, 2024
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Donald Trump kicked off the running mate pick phase of his presidential campaign at a Fox News town hall event in South Carolina earlier this year, confirming six names. That list has only continued to grow, with the former president confirming in a March 13 Newsmax interview that it was up to about 15 contenders.
"The list is long, and it's extremely early in any kind of process," a Trump adviser told NBC News in March. "No one has been directly reached out to yet, and I do not expect that for some time."
At the Fox town hall, Trump said everyone on his "shortlist" was a "good" and "solid" option. But a lot can change in an instant when it comes to the former president's revolving door of friends, foes and frenemies. With that in mind, let's take a closer look at his relationships with the potential veeps who've been getting the most buzz…
Now in her second term, Kristi Noem initially garnered national attention for emulating Donald Trump's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. Which is to say, she denied the science behind how the virus was spreading and what could be done to stop it.
By November 2020, her Trump-like COVID policies had helped boost South Dakota's positivity rate to almost 60%, according to The Guardian, which noted at the time that "nearly six out of 10 people who take a Covid test are infected."
The South Dakota conservative has backed Trump on other issues, too. More recently, she's slammed attempts to remove the former president from the ballot in Colorado and Maine on Fox News and campaigned for him in Iowa ahead of the caucuses.
But her devotion to Trump dates back much further, as evidenced by the gift she gave him in 2020: a mini-Mount Rushmore replica she'd commissioned for him. The piece stood at four-feet tall, according to The Daily Beast, and included the four presidents who appear on the actual monument… plus Trump's face.
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While campaigning for her first gubernatorial term in 2018, Kristi Noem shared a video in which she recalled having met Donald Trump in the Oval Office for the first time during her tenure in Congress.
"I shook his hand, and I said, 'Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.' And he goes, 'Do you know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?'" Noem said in the clip (via the Argus Leader).
"I started laughing," she continued. "He wasn't laughing. … He was totally serious."
Noem ultimately commissioned the replica, dubbed "Mount Trumpmore," and presented it to him privately when he visited her 2020 Independence Day event in South Dakota. Trump spoke at the celebration, which was later branded a COVID super-spreader.
In 2021, The Daily Beast tracked down the local artists who created the piece, Lee Leuning and Sherri Treeby. Leuning said they "were told [Trump] loved" the piece, though they weren't invited to attend his speech.
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Kristi Noem's personal life isn't without its eyebrow-raising moments. In the fall of 2023, the New York Post, citing multiple sources, claimed the South Dakota governor was having a years-long affair with longtime Donald Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski. Both Kristi and Corey are married. "This has been a known, open thing and we've all been waiting for it to blow up at some point," a source told the Post after detailing — and seemingly witnessing — multiple instances in which the two were allegedly unfaithful to their spouses.
Then, in April 2024, Kristi shocked many when she admitted to shooting a puppy who was "the picture of pure joy." In her book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," the politician wrote about Cricket, a 14-month-old pup she hoped would be a good pheasant hunter. "I hated that dog," she wrote, calling Cricket "less than worthless as a hunting dog," "untrainable" and "dangerous to anyone she came in contact with."
"At that moment… I realized I had to put her down," the governor recalled. Kristi then went on to describe grabbing a gun and shooting the dog at a gravel pit.
Kristi also described shooting a goat that was "disgusting, musky, rancid."
MORE: South Dakota governor's secret life with one of Trump's top advisers revealed
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On his website, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance describes himself as a "Trump-aligned rising conservative star." GOP insiders have frequently cited the 39-year-old freshman senator as a strong prospective vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. Pundits often point to his fundraising track record, in particular, which could certainly come in handy, given the former president's need for cash to stem his tide of legal drama.
But Trump has a thorny past with the "Hillbilly Elegy" author, whom he belittled at a 2022 rally by saying Vance was "in love" with him and couldn't stop "kissing my a**."
In almost the same breath, however, the former president flip-flopped to call Vance "a great person who I've really gotten to know," The Hill reported at the time.
"Yeah, he said some bad things about me, but that was before he knew me and then he fell in love," Trump said. "Remember I said that about Kim Jong Un? He fell in love, and they said, 'Oh, Trump is saying he fell in love.' Actually he did, if you want to know the truth."
What did we say about that revolving door?!
Moving on…
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When Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio were both vying for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Trump dubbed the Florida lawmaker "Little Marco" and said he "couldn't be elected dogcatcher" in his home state. Around the same time, Rubio blasted Trump as a "con artist" who could "fracture" the GOP and was too "dangerous" to be given the nuclear codes.
Now, it seems "Little Marco" is making big strides towards the top of Trump's not-so-short shortlist of potential running mates for 2024.
That's according to NBC News, which on March 20 reported six people familiar with Trump's running mate search said Rubio was "moving up the list" in spite of their past differences.
While appearing on ABC News' "This Week" on March 21, Rubio basically said he'd be honored to share a ticket with his former rival. "Anybody who would be offered the chance to serve their country as vice president should consider that to be an honor," he told anchor Jon Karl, adding that he had not "talked to anybody on [Trump's] team or family or inner circle about vice president."
Rubio went on to shrug off his past comments about Trump: "It was a campaign," he said.
Pundits have noted Rubio's age — he'll be 53 in May — and his parents' Cuban heritage could help Trump woo key swaths of voters. The fact that they are both residents of Florida, however, could hurt them in a close election. The Constitution's Twelfth Amendment bars Electoral College members from voting for two people from their home state, meaning Florida's 30 electors would be unable to vote for the pair. That is, unless one of the two changed their official residence, à la former Dallas resident Dick Cheney, who in 2000 ran alongside fellow Texan George W. Bush. Just months before the election, Cheney, who'd lived in Texas for years, infamously changed his voter registration to Wyoming, where he had a vacation home.
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After meeting with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Feb. 29, Trump added the conservative governor to his increasingly long list of names during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, saying Abbott is "absolutely" on his vice presidential shortlist.
Asked if anyone else was a contender, Trump referenced South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott's failed White House bid, reiterating that Scott was "OK as a candidate" but "for me, he's unbelievable, he's a surrogate."
Scott's been a continued presence on Trump's campaign trail and was on the early list of potential VPs Trump said he was considering in a Fox town hall in February. That list included three of Trump's former rivals in the GOP primary: Scott, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, aka "Ron DeSanctimonious," all of whom endorsed Trump after exiting the race.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds made the cut at that point, too.
MORE: Judge sets start date for Trump's criminal hsuh-money trial
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Noting Tim Scott was in the audience at the town hall event, Donald Trump first praised him for being "such a great advocate." He then took a dig at the senator's defunct White House run.
"A lot of people are talking about that gentleman right over there," Trump said while motioning at Scott. "I have to say this in a very positive way," he continued. "Tim Scott, he has been much better for me than he was for himself. I watched his campaign, and he doesn't like talking about himself. But, boy, does he talk about Trump. … I called him and I said, 'Tim, you're better for me than you were for yourself.'"
Scott seems to agree. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, the South Carolina Republican said campaigning for Trump allows him to be "free from the internal struggle on how to promote myself without being braggadocious."
There's quite a chasm between braggadocio, however, and prostration — a fact Scott proved all too memorably in January in New Hampshire…
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After Donald Trump was declared the winner in New Hampshire's GOP primary, beating Nikki Haley, he had two of his former primary opponents, Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy, stand behind him onstage during his victory speech.
It was Haley who, as South Carolina's governor, appointed Scott to the Senate from the House to fill a vacancy in 2013. Trump used that fact, along with Scott's presence onstage, to disparage Haley as part of the night's big finish.
Referencing the former South Carolina lawmaker from the podium, Trump asked Scott if he'd considered "that she actually appointed you … and you're the senator of her state, and [you] endorsed me," before concluding Scott "must really hate" Haley.
At that point, Scott stepped out from behind Trump, leaned into the mic and said, "I just love you."
The move earned Scott a pat on the back from Trump — "that's why he's a great politician!" — and condemnation from Black leaders.
"There are few moments in my life I've been more embarrassed than to watch Tim Scott," the Rev. Al Sharpton said on MSNBC. "We fought to see people like him, Black, become a high elected [official] in the South," the civil rights activist explained.
The Senate's only Black Republican, Scott has previously drawn criticism for claiming welfare assistance was harder "to survive" for Black Americans than slavery and denying that systemic racism exists in the U.S.
"He has a right to be Republican," Sharpton said. "He has the right to do Donald Trump. But to do it in such a way that is so humiliating was troubling."
Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele also called out Scott, predicting on MSNBC that he'll "do the sycophantic dance" when asked because "that's what the party wants."
Scott later appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox show and dismissed the New Hampshire backlash as evidence of racism among liberals.
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Donald Trump, meanwhile, has maintained a positive tone in public dealings with Tim Scott since 2023, when he announced his White House bid the same week as Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor's run turned Trump against "disloyal" DeSantis. It also emboldened Trump to support other opponents, including Scott, whose poll numbers suggested they were less of a threat.
"Good luck to Senator Tim Scott in entering the Republican Presidential Primary Race," Trump wrote on Truth Social in May 2023. "It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable."
Trump added that he and Scott collaborated on part of the Republican-led Congress's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. "I got Opportunity Zones done with Tim, a big deal that has been highly successful," he wrote of the program, which critics have called "costly and ineffective."
"I like him," Trump said of Scott in May 2023, according to The New York Times. "We're just going to say nice things about Tim."
Assessing his dynamic with Trump in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Scott concluded, "Our styles are incredibly different. But they have proven to be very complementary."
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Donald Trump's potential running mate prospects begin to look significantly less likely after Kristi Noem and Tim Scott.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican biotech engineer who ran for president on a platform similar to Trump's, appeared on Trump's recent VP shortlist, but there's little evidence suggesting he's a top pick.
Before he dropped out of the race, Ramaswamy initially avoided Trump's wrath by praising him repeatedly. That changed in January when Trump lashed out about a Ramaswamy campaign T-shirt featuring Trump's Fulton County, Georgia, mugshot and the words, "Save Trump, vote Vivek."
"Vivek started his campaign as a great supporter, 'the best President in generations,' etc. Unfortunately, now all he does is disguise his support in the form of deceitful campaign tricks," Trump growled on Truth Social.
"He's been making slights at the former president and we have noticed," a Trump adviser told CNN in January. "If you poke the bear, the bear will bite back."
Ramaswamy dropped out soon thereafter and endorsed "the bear." After the New Hampshire primary, Trump introduced Ramaswamy onstage before his victory speech — with a little jab. The younger politician could speak to the crowd only "if he promised to do it in a minute or less," Trump told the audience.
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Putting aside, for the moment, Donald Trump's history with his potential veep picks, a straw poll conducted recently at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) showed attendees were leaning heavily toward Kristi Noem and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Organized by the conservative news network Real America's Voice, with attendees chiming in from Feb. 21 to Feb. 24, the poll showed 15% of conference-goers liked Noem, while another 15% liked Ramaswamy for a Trump running mate, according to Newsweek.
Both the South Dakota governor and biotech businessman spoke at the event, as did most of the other Republicans frequently cited as possible VP options including former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. The former Democrat came in third on the straw poll, with 9% of participants choosing her as Trump's most favorable potential running mate.
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Donald Trump's affection for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was on full display in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Feb. 29., when the pair reunited at Shelby Park, a section of the U.S.-Mexico border Abbott's controversial Operation Lone Star program seized in January. After viewing the razor wire Abbott installed along the banks of the Rio Grande to deter migrants from illegally entering the U.S., both men gave remarks in which they slammed President Joe Biden's handling of border security.
Later, during a joint Trump-Abbott interview with Sean Hannity, Trump was asked if he'd consider Abbott as a VP contender.
"Certainly he would be somebody that I would very much consider," Trump said, per the Houston Chronicle. "I've been hearing that more and more from friends of mine. After the show, I think I'm going to hear it a lot more, too."
In his remarks earlier in the day, Trump repeatedly praised Abbott for waging "war" on illegal immigration and claimed Biden was responsible for a "migrant crime" wave, despite a preponderance of evidence that shows migrants have not driven crime rates to rise anywhere. In fact, most of the cities that Operation Lone Star has bussed and flown the most migrants to — including Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles — have seen crime rates dropping as more migrants have arrived, NBC News reported in February.
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Greg Abbott, meanwhile, is engaged in a multi-front feud with the Biden administration, which has argued the wire and other border barriers, including Texas soldiers, are preventing Border Patrol agents from doing their jobs, among other things. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled federal agents' authority supersedes that of the state at the border site, essentially giving Border Patrol a green light to remove the wire. In spite of the ruling, Abbott wrote on X in February that "more razor wire barriers and National Guard are coming to the Texas border."
In a separate legal action against Texas, the Justice Department is fighting the governor's SB 4, a controversial law that would allow Texas police to arrest migrants suspected of having entered the country illegally. The law would also give state and local officials the authority to order people to leave the country and have them "returned to Mexico regardless of their country of origin," according to ABC News. A federal judge granted a temporary injunction halting the law on Feb. 29; Texas has said it will appeal.
With immigration and border security now topping many lists of American voter concerns, Abbott's continued defiance of the Biden administration presumably strengthens his VP potential in Trump's eyes.
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Things are decidedly less harmonious between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
After trashing DeSantis on the campaign trail, Trump said in January that he was "honored" to have the Florida governor's endorsement after DeSantis exited the race. At the Feb. 20 town hall, Trump even included DeSantis on his VP shortlist.
But those brief moments of unity were short-lived.
In a call with supporters on Feb. 21, DeSantis said he knew he'd been mentioned as a possible running mate. "I'm not doing that," he said. He went on to criticize Trump for using "identity politics" in his running mate search, NBC News reported.
"Now we have a diverse Republican Party. I want everybody in the fold, don't get me wrong," DeSantis said on the call. "But I don't want people representing ten, 15% of the party being in the driver's seat."
In response, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, "Ron DeSantis failed miserably in his presidential campaign and does not have a voice in selecting the next vice president of the United States."
Senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita was less generous: "Chicken fingers and pudding cups is what you will be remembered for, you sad little man," he wrote on X.
As for the "identity politics" claim, it's worth noting LaCivita has acknowledged the campaign's work to win Black voters, despite Trump's years-long habit of aiming baseless election fraud claims at cities with large Black populations.
"We are creating a massive problem for the Democratic Party's base," he said in a January interview with the Associated Press. "That's just an opportunity that we would be remiss if we didn't exploit."
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Photographic foreshadowing, anyone? At the White House in 2018, Donald Trump met with a group of governors-elect including Ron DeSantis (seen here wincing as Trump speaks beside him) and South Dakota's Kristi Noem.
In the years that followed, DeSantis fell out of favor with Trump, while Noem has continued to wave her MAGA flag high. Trump has clearly noticed. He mentioned Noem and Tim Scott as possible VP picks in an early February interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, saying the South Dakota Republican has "been incredible fighting" for him.
"She's been a great governor," he said of Noem a few months earlier on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"She gave me a very full-throated endorsement, a beautiful endorsement, actually. And, you know, it's been a very good state for me. And certainly she'd be one of the people I'd consider, or for something else maybe," he added.
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Donald Trump gave Tulsi Gabbard a nod at the Fox town hall as well. Gabbard, the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress, represented her district as a relatively progressive Democrat until 2021.
She did an about-face and left the party in October 2022, saying in a video announcement on X that she'd come to see Democrats as "an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness" who promote "anti-white racism." She's now a regular contributor to Fox News.
Given Trump's habit of corralling former political opponents as new members of Team Trump, Gabbard's Democratic past could be an asset were she to seek a GOP vice-presidential nomination.
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New York Rep. Elise Stefanik wasn't mentioned in Donald Trump's town hall VP shortlist, but she's widely assumed to be in consideration for the spot. Her name also popped up in the CPAC straw poll on favorable VP options, where she and Tim Scott each scored 8%.
"I'm proud to be a top surrogate," the increasingly powerful young Republican told CNN in February. "I would proudly serve in a future Trump administration."
Stefanik's GOP star began to rise around the time she replaced Liz Cheney as Chair of the House Republican Conference in 2021. She returned to the spotlight in December 2023, when her questioning of university presidents in the congressional antisemitism hearings went viral.
Stefanik also endorsed Trump for the 2024 nomination in 2022 — before he did — per CNN, and her turnaround from Trump critic to defender will likely be a boon as she pursues a closer affiliation with the former president.
That affiliation's pretty close already, though. Stefanik, who often echoes Trump's baseless 2020 election claims, has reportedly filed complaints against multiple judges handling the backlog of lawsuits he's facing. It doesn't hurt that she's also a major fundraiser for her party.
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Perhaps the least familiar name on Donald Trump's VP shortlist was that of Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, who spoke in support of the former president at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22, then introduced Trump at the conference a few days later.
"We have to have leadership that has a bold vision of what we should do and not be afraid of polls, of what people think we might need to do. We've got to have leadership that's going to say tough things when we need to hear them, and we have that leadership this November in Donald J. Trump," he said near the end of a speech that largely focused on border security.
He later appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," where he was asked to comment on Trump's recent claim his criminal indictments have made him appealing to Black voters.
Speaking at the Black Conservative Federation Gala in Columbia, South Carolina, on Feb. 23, Trump said, in part, "I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that's why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against."
On "Meet the Press," Kristen Welker showed footage of Trump making those remarks and asked Donalds (per Newsweek), "Congressman, it sounds like Donald Trump was implying that he could win Black voters because they get indicted all the time too. Is that what he was saying?"
Donalds responded, "It's part of it, Kristen. Their look of it is real simple: 'Well, dang, if the government is going after him with foolishness, he can't be that bad.'"
Welker, for her part, then noted the lack of evidence behind Trump's claims the cases against him are politically motivated.
While Donalds hasn't made an official comment on his inclusion on Trump's VP shortlist, the Florida lawmaker was asked about it briefly during the convention. "Man, it's cool. It's kinda surreal," he told Spectrum News. "But, you know what, you just work hard, do your job, don't worry about much else."
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Donald Trump, seen here embracing his then-running mate, Mike Pence, in 2016, is expected to announce his 2024 VP pick this summer.
Asked about a timeline for his VP announcement, Trump told Fox's Maria Bartiromo in early February, "not for a while," per The Hill.
Asked what criteria he'd be considering in his selection, the former president mused, "It's got to be who would [be] able to be a good president. I mean, you always have to think that because you know, a civil emergency … things happen, right?"
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Donald Trump, who's been accused of expressing support for Jan. 6 rioters who were chanting calls to "hang" his second-in-command during the Capitol attack, switched gears by the end of his answer.
"No matter who you are, things happen," Trump continued. "It's got to be number one. Who's your enemy," he said.
