Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an interview Wednesday that he would advise former President Trump to pick 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley as his running mate.
During the New York Times’s DealBook Summit, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked McCarthy who the “right person” would be for Trump to pick as his vice president among Haley, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and 2024 GOP presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
“If I was a political person, and I was going to advise somebody, you’re going to pick the vice president, that’s about addition, not subtraction. So you’re not going to pick somebody that already equates to you,” McCarthy responded.
“Now if I was picking for purely political decisions, what it looks like today is the anti-Trump vote is going to Nikki Haley,” he added.
McCarthy said Trump would need to get the Republican base and independents to support him in order to win back the White House, noting that there are some voters who refuse to vote for the former president.
McCarthy said that is why he would select the person who could convince those voters to support the Trump ticket, saying, “if that person is with you, maybe they’d be with you too.”
Asked who that person is, McCarthy said, “Well, right now I think it would be Nikki Haley in my view. But the question is who you select, will they serve? So that’s another question you have to have. And it’s about addition.”
“Do you think she would serve?” Sorkin asked.
“It’s up to Nikki,” McCarthy responded. “But this is a bigger question for Trump: If his campaign is about renew, rebuild and restore, he’ll win. If it’s about revenge, he’ll lose. The only person that’s going to determine that is — not his campaign ad — is him.”
McCarthy has been a fierce Trump supporter but has avoided endorsing the former president explicitly. He was pressed in an interview last month on why he has not yet made an endorsement.
“The campaign is still going. There’s a very good chance I would endorse President Trump,” McCarthy said, later adding, “I believe President Trump will be our nominee and I believe President Trump will get reelected.”
Haley has recently ticked up in national polls, rivaling 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis for second place after Trump in the GOP primary.
Haley has largely avoided any severe attacks on the former president, focusing on his policy positions. Trump, however, has recently taken notice of Haley’s success, nicknaming her “birdbrain.”
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