South Dakota Governor and COVID promoter Kristi Noem has officially launched her 2024 vice presidential campaign. Friday, Noem endorsed Donald Trump for president — the same man who collects indictments from different states like travelers pick up those Starbucks “You Are Here” mugs.
Noem once told the New York Times she didn’t think Trump offered the Republican Party “the best chance” for electoral success in 2024, but that was way back in November 2022 before he’d received all his indictments, which Republican voters have apparently confused with Academy Award wins. He’s the Katharine Hepburn of coup plotters.
Thursday, Noem gushed on Newsmax that she would consider serving as Trump’s running mate “in a heartbeat.” Although Trump incited a mob that almost killed his last VP, this is probably less foolhardy than it seems. Most of the other Republican presidential candidates are secretly hoping Trump will either die or get sent to prison. Noem is ready, willing, and more or less able to step in if this long national Trump nightmare actually ends.
Noem met Trump, who is out on bail, shortly before the South Dakota rally where she pledged her unwavering support to a potential future felon. We assume she had a lawyer present.
From the AP:
“I will do everything I can to help him win and save this country,” Noem said as she formally offered her endorsement before Trump took the stage. She said all the other Republican presidential candidates had been invited to the event. “All of them told us that they had better things to do. But when President Trump was invited to come be with you tonight, he said, ‘I will be there,’” she said.
Hell, if I’d just been arrested and released on bail, I’d also go anywhere (within the US). South Dakota is far preferable to the Fulton County Jail.
Only three other governors — Mike Dunleavy of Alaska, Jim Justice of West Virginia and Henry McMaster of South Carolina — have endorsed so far during the primary, and like Noem, they have all boarded the Trump train. Yes, we’ve noticed that McMaster is from the same state as Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, both of whom are considered leading contenders for the VP consolation prize. However, that suggests Trump is a sane and rational person, like Joe Biden, who’d pick a running mate who ran against him and, in Haley’s case, was mildly critical of him.
Although Trump sells souvenir mugshots with the slogan “Never Surrender,” Haley thinks Trump should go ahead and surrender the nomination to her because he’s going to spend “more time in a courtroom than on the campaign trail” and Republicans “can’t allow a President Kamala Harris.” (Haley has already determined that Joe Biden is dead.) Alas, there’s no evil “girl boss” camaraderie between Noem and Haley.
Haley is just a little too lean and hungry for the vice presidency. She’s not a fully committed zealot like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake, who are both toxic to normal people, so they are more likely to cost Trump Georgia and Arizona than provide him any home state advantage. Noem, however, remains a safer bet for Trump because she doesn’t represent a swing state nor is she an establishment darling like Haley and Scott. She’s almost completely superfluous, which is probably more acceptable to Trump’s massive ego.
Last week, during a bail-enabled interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump dismissed the impact a potential running mate might have on his campaign.
“There’s never been a vice president that got a president elected, because it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “It sounds good and everything, but the president gets himself elected.”
And then the vice president helps him execute a coup to remain in office against the public’s will. It’s right there in Trump’s personal copy of the Constitution.
[CNN / New York Times]
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