Trump’s RUNNING MATE in SPOTLIGHT
IN MILWAUKEE – Donald Trump’s final opponent from the presidential primaries takes center stage at the Republican National Convention, one day after he was formally chosen as the GOP’s 2024 presidential contender and named Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate.
Speaking at the convention on Tuesday is former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who was the Trump administration’s U.N. ambassador. Multiple people with knowledge of the plan confirmed the decision to Fox News over the weekend.
Haley had not received an invitation to speak at the convention as of last week, and she had no intention of going to the four-day event, which is being hosted in the largest city in Wisconsin, swing state.
But the GOP swiftly came together behind its flag-bearer after Saturday’s failed murder attempt on Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania, where the former president was clearly bleeding when a bullet grazed his ear and where one witness was killed and two badly injured. Haley was asked to speak at the convention as part of that effort to promote unity. Haley announced her run for president in February of last year, making history as the first prominent contender to go against Trump, who had declared his candidacy three months before. She was Trump’s last opponent and engaged in a heated two-candidate race that lasted from the New Hampshire primary in late January until Super Tuesday in early March. On March 6, the day after Trump won 14 of the 15 GOP primary races on Super Tuesday, Haley declared she was putting her White House campaign on hold.
Haley made it plain that she wanted to continue speaking out when she left the contest. In the months following her withdrawal, Haley went on to garner close to 20% of the vote in Republican presidential primaries. Haley declared she would vote for Trump in late May, marking her first public remarks since declaring the end of her 2024 campaign.
Haley finished the Republican presidential primary with a total of 97 delegates. Additionally, Haley asked her delegates to back Trump last week and published each one of them.
When Brian Kilmeade of Fox News questioned Trump last week over Haley, the president responded, “There was a lot of bad blood there, and she stayed too long.”
Trump pointed to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rival candidate for the nomination who withdrew three days before the New Hampshire primary, saying, “DeSantis left right after Iowa.” After Iowa, she ought to have immediately departed.” A few well-known Republican Senate candidates will also be in the spotlight on the second night of the convention when they address GOP delegates from Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum platform.
The GOP hopes to regain the majority in the Senate that it lost in the 2020 election cycle, in part because of an extremely favorable Senate electoral map.
Tuesday’s meeting comes after Monday’s historic breakthroughs.
Trump revealed his much anticipated running mate during the presidential roll call of the convention, just before formally announcing his candidacy.
Considering the future of a Republican Party led by Trump and his hordes of MAGA devotees, the former president included Vance, 39, on the party’s national ticket. Now, Trump will run on the same ticket as one of his strongest Senate allies and a former Trump opponent who has turned into a prominent disciple of America First.
Before entering the race for electoral office, Vance, a former venture entrepreneur and the author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” was one of the few Republicans seen as the front-runner for running mate. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota were also in the group.
A few hours before Trump announced that Rubio and Burgum would not be his running mates, Fox News claimed that Rubio and Burgum had received phone calls.
Additionally, Fox News was informed by a reliable source within Vance’s political network that the senator was unaware he was Trump’s running mate only 20 minutes before Trump made the announcement via a social media post on the Truth Social platform.
