Former President Donald Trump has refused to say whether Ohio Senator J.D. Vance would be prepared to serve as vice president if he wins the November election, instead saying it doesn’t matter.
“I’ve always had great respect for him, but… historically, the vice president has had no influence on elections. They’ve had virtually no influence,” he said Wednesday during a Q&A session with black journalists in Chicago.
The question came after the panelists brought up Vance’s numerous “mistakes” and the “controversies” since he was publicly nominated as Trump’s running mate. They also mentioned the recent assassination attempt on Trump.
Getty Images; Associated Press
“Historically, choosing a vice president has never made a difference,” he said.
Trump cited Lyndon Johnson’s presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy as a “maybe” exception to the question of why the choice of a vice presidential candidate matters, but added that it’s “a political reason, not a voting reason.”
A recent example he doesn’t mention is Senator John McCain’s choice of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. At the time, journalist Howard Fineman wrote that Palin “rushed wavering Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans to Senator Barack Obama, even though she failed to significantly expand Senator John McCain’s base, even among those who call themselves conservatives.”
A 2010 study from Stanford University found that McCain’s nomination of Palin caused his approval ratings to drop by about 2 percentage points, or about 2.1 million votes.
The Washington Post cited the full study, reporting that when McCain-Palin’s campaign began, most people surveyed said they had an unfavorable opinion of her, but as the campaign progressed, nearly all of those surveyed had a negative opinion of her.
Voters at the time also expressed concern that if something happened to McCain (who at 72 would have been the oldest president ever elected), Palin would be the one to vote.
Trump is 78. Like President Joe Biden, Trump has faced scrutiny because of his age.
