In an interview with CNN, former campaign consultant Matthew Dowd issued a warning to President Joe Biden’s team ahead of the debate with former President Donald Trump. Dowd discussed a recent report that Trump is selecting only three potential running mates. This comes after a video surfaced of Trump declaring he had already decided on his choice but hadn’t told anyone.
CNN’s Alayna Treene said she believed he had reduced his original list to a much smaller group — Doug Burgum, J.D. Vance, and Marco Rubio. Dowd warned that the “Biden campaign would be foolish” to believe that Trump’s vice presidential candidate is one of those three names, implying that those names may have been released as a diversion.
Below is a transcript of the interview, via Grabien:
CARBRERA: “Let’s turn to the Trump veepstakes. Here’s some sound with the former president in Philadelphia that Dasha just referenced.”
[Clip starts]
Reporter: “Will your VP come to the debate?
Trump: “Most likely, yeah. Yeah.”
(…)
Reporter: “Have you decided who your vice president is?”
Trump: “In my mind, yeah.”
Reporter: “Do they know.”
Trump: “No. Nobody knows.”
[Clip ends]
CARBRERA: “So for those who maybe couldn’t hear clearly and couldn’t see the subtitles there, he was asked, will your vice president pick be at the debate? He said, yes, pretty sure they’re going to be there, and that yes, he — he in his mind knows who his VP pick will be. But nobody else knows. NBC News has reported that Trump is zeroing in on Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, senators J.D. Vance of Ohio and Marco Rubio of Florida as those possible top contenders. Matthew, anyone stand out on this list, anyone the Biden campaign would need to worry about?”
DOWD: “Well, first, I find it kind of funny that Donald Trump says the vice presidential candidate will be at debate, and we know what he’s going to do. He’s going to unload a bus full of potential people that are all going to clamor by him. So there may be 15 people of elected officials at that debate that he can say that person was there. So I find it kind of funny. I mean, I still believe, Ana, that, that — the Biden campaign would be foolish to think that that’s the list that Donald Trump is ultimately going to pick from. It may be, but I think their campaign process is going to be well, we’ll deal with that when this person comes out. Because I still believe — of those three picks, I still believe that somebody’s not on that list would be a better pick than those three, because you just play their own words, all of those folks own words back to Donald Trump during the course of the campaign, and they’ve said more negative things about Donald Trump than Joe Biden has said about Donald Trump, each of those three people on that list. So I think we all have to just wait and see because as Donald Trump says it’s in his own mind and the mind of Donald Trump is not something easy to fathom. So I still think it could be somebody off that list.”
For months, rumors about Trump’s “VP list” have been circulating widely.
According to other recent reports, Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), Representatives Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and the three finalists were not the only Republicans on Trump’s initial list of potential vice presidents.
Ben Carson, the former secretary of housing and urban development, has also been brought up.
