Former President Donald Trump has been hinting that he will announce his Vice Presidential pick “soon.” Building anticipation is an old marketing trick. Since Trump is a better-than-average salesman, that should come as a surprise to no one. The upside is that it allows us a few more weeks to have fun speculating who he might pick, and what the ups and downs of those picks might be.
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One interesting possibility? North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Why? Well, I’m gonna tell you.
Doug Burgum checks a lot of the VP blocks. He has a reasonably solid record as Governor. While Governor of North Dakota, Burgum has:
- Deployed North Dakota National Guard troops to help with Texas’s Operation Lone Star to secure the southern border.
- Signed a bill into law in 2021 declaring North Dakota as a Second Amendment sanctuary state.
- Advocated for the U.S. to be (again) energy independent, which is a point that former President Trump has been justifiably hitting hard.
On the other hand, he has announced a goal to make North Dakota a carbon-neutral state by 2030 – six years from now – which seems unlikely at best.
Doug Burgum is kind of the conservative anti-Trump. His life has been dramatically different than the former president’s: He was born and raised in a small North Dakota town to a family of farmers and went into software instead of real estate, entering politics after selling his software company to Microsoft.
Previously on RedState: OPINION: Why Not Elise Stefanik for Vice President?
CPAC 2024: Will Byron Donalds Be Trump’s VP Pick?
Most important, at least to the former (and possibly future) president is that Governor Burgum’s support has been unwavering.
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North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) said it would be a “travesty of justice” if former President Trump is convicted in the New York hush money trial.
“Well, if he becomes a convicted felon in this case, that’s a just, a travesty of justice, because as I just said, when you’ve got a business filing error, that is for something that was again, it’s not illegal to pay people for nondisclosure agreements — that happens all the time. I’m sure this network and others have done that. So that’s not illegal,” Burgum told co-host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
There has been a great deal of speculation as to how this ongoing trial (and if you aren’t following Susie Moore’s on-the-spot, while-its-hot reporting on the Trump trial, you should be) will affect the election; in another statement at the CNN interview with Jake Tapper, Governor Burgum makes a good point:
“And so … this is why the outcome of this trial is not going to change a lot of people’s minds. It might actually, in some ways, help President Trump because it reinforces the idea that the Biden administration is willing to use lawfare to try to attack a political opponent,” he added.
In fact, the former President will more than likely pick someone from a swing state, and given the current political climate, even Trump is not immune to the idea that his VP must be a woman or a “person of color” if not both – although choosing on that basis hasn’t worked out well for the current president. And to be perfectly candid, Governor Burgum wouldn’t be my first pick. He’s been a pretty successful governor, and his executive experience is good, but he does appear to have bought at least partway into the carbon-neutral hooraw. Also, a VP pick ideally will help land a state in the Electoral College tally that may have otherwise gone the other way, and North Dakota will go Republican in any case, so there’s no advantage there.
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Until former President Trump announces his choice, though, we can still entertain ourselves speculating.
