The New Official Trump VP Tier List: The Upper Half

Looking at the few Trump VP selections who could help, or at least not harm, his chances.

Read Part I (The Bad Ones) here.

Update 4/26/23

In the time it took to edit this article, I received some breaking news that threw this entire list into chaos: Kristi Noem killed a fucking dog. And not an aggressive breed or a rabid one terrorizing some children or even an old dog that just needed to be put out of its misery, but an adorable 14-month-old wirehaired pointer that she couldn’t manage to train. If you want to find any sort of precedent here, the best I can think of is how Mitt Romney had his own pet-related scandal where he, notably, did not kill the dog he had strapped to the roof of his car. That story, which haunted him for his entire national career, was bad enough. This is infinitely worse, even with increased polarization meaning that the Republican Party may be more willing to tolerate dog torture/murder.

While I had Noem as just the third-worst possible pick for Trump on my list last week, you can consider that substantially revised. She is now, without question, easily the worst running mate Trump could choose. Even the possibility that conservatives could deflect from this by making it a “30 to 50 feral hogs” incident that shows how liberals don’t understand rural living has also been entirely undone by Noem herself. She admitted to putting the dog down not out of necessity, but malice and hatred. In her own words in her own book: “I hated that dog.”

This is a campaign-defining scandal without parallel. Even Marjorie Taylor Green hasn’t yet admitted to taking a PUPPY out to a GRAVEL PIT to be SHOT. The only way the damage can be undone is if Noem saves Trump’s life by killing another, possibly larger dog, which would prove that her skills will be of value in a post-Major Biden White House.

Anyways, on to our regularly scheduled programming.

C Tier

Former HUD Secretary Ben Carson (R-MD)

There may be no other figure in American politics whose career I understand less than Ben Carson. Nothing about this man’s career has ever made sense to me. I never understood why he was ever considered a serious presidential contender in the first place, one supposedly good speech notwithstanding. I never understood how he actually became a serious presidential contender after that—serious enough that he once took a lead against Trump in the averages for a few days (fun fact: he still is the last Republican politician to ever do so). I did understand why he promptly collapsed, but even that was followed by more confusion as Trump began to treat this random weirdo like political royalty. He brought Carson so close to the campaign that the man himself felt it necessary to gently point out that he didn’t have the experience necessary for a major role when Trump was searching for a VP. Undeterred, Trump would still keep him close, eventually giving him a cabinet position that he, for some reason, decided to take up. He would then do a terrible job and very quietly and slowly vanish from the public consciousness until now, where Trump is reportedly considering him for VP once again.

How can you account for what such a strange figure from another time could bring to a national ticket in 2024? It’s tough. Carson’s exact appeal was difficult to surmise even in his heyday, and now, nearly nine years after his peak, it’s next to impossible to tell how the crucial voting demographics of this year’s election would receive him. But this may also be the biggest argument in his favor. By being such an irrelevant figure over the course of the past eight years, he’s avoided being stained by his side’s most unpopular initiatives of the past few years. Unlike J.D. Vance or Tulsi Gabbard, he isn’t committed to an esoteric online ideology. Unlike Huckabee Sanders or Noem, he’s never signed an abortion ban into law. If you take this perspective and squint a little, Carson can start to look like a relatively strong pick, so utterly “nothing” that he doesn’t bring any risk of holding Trump back.

Is this the right take for Trump-Carson? I considered it for a bit at first. But after refreshing myself on what happened the last time Carson was on the national stage, I realized that I myself had fallen victim to the positive effect his prolonged absence has had on his reputation. While keeping in mind that he said all of these things a while ago and that Trump himself says dumber things on a regular basis, it’s worth remembering that:

• He compared both abortion and Obamacare to slavery

• He is a truther regarding the purposes of the Egyptian pyramids

• He once proposed giving transgender people their own public bathrooms (an untenably progressive position in the GOP of today)

• He opposes Muslims taking public office due to their religion

• He once had to “defend himself against allegations that he never attempted to murder a child”

• He is against aborting Baby Hitler

You can go further than this into other scandals, like the $31,000 dining set he bought for himself with public funds as HUD secretary, but this paints a pretty clear picture. There might have been something here if he wasn’t so very, very weird, but he is, so the potential for him to be a low-impact pick that lets Trump campaign how he wants is drastically muted. While there’s still a possibility for him to be a decent do-no-harm selection for Trump if Democrats decide to ignore him or if their attacks don’t land, you really shouldn’t be too scared if Trump ends up picking him.

Summary:

Roevember Risk: High

Seriousness: Medium

Insanity: High

Moderacy: Nonexistent

Sen. Marco “Liddle Marco” Rubio (R-FL)

He’s back!!!