Donald Trump is already winnowing down his list of potential candidates for the second slot on the Republican presidential ticket in 2024, and those options will not include either his former Vice President Mike Pence or his former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Yahoo News reports.
In “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” writers Peter Baker and Susan Glasser say Trump told them in an interview he wouldn’t choose Pence because “[i]t would be totally inappropriate,” adding, “Mike committed political suicide,” which, if I’m Mike Pence, political suicide is better than my actual lynching.
Trump also ruled out former South Carolina governor Haley, who has been a loyal Trumpian while still attempting to stay grounded in reality. That’s not good enough for Trump because, he’s told various people, she has a “complexion problem.” Haley, whose first name is Nimrata, is the child of immigrants from India.
The book also notes Trump has been telling people he needs to get back to Washington to protect his life, he believes, because Iran will try to assassinate him for killing Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 drone attack in Iraq. “[H]e had to go back to Washington, where he would be safer,” the authors say Trump told visitors to Mar-a-Lago in December 2020, after he quiet quit the presidency.