Jay Weber Show transcript 6-7-24 6:10am
Yesterday- one of the stories i ignored -was the news that Donald Trump had narrowed down his VP candidates to seven people...and sent them vetting materials...etc.
And this had a few listeners asking: who is your favorite for VP?
One reason I ignored the story is that I have already handicapped these people for you- and the second reason is-
Normally, selecting a VP is like selecting a pope: it never ends up being someone who was on the early lists.
Whether it was Paul Ryan being spirited around secretly by mitt- or Hillary Clinton shocking everyone with her pick that no one had ever heard of before- (and no, you can’t remember his name, and i won’t tell you)
Or whether it was John McCain going-way-off the board and shocking everyone with Sarah Palin-
It never seems to be a name that was expected-because every campaign wants this to be a ‘surprising’ one. They all hope it leads to several days of good publicity and free media.
There’s always ‘showmanship’ involved...as they look for buzz and hype...
And so, I’m not saying Donald Trump is going to choose one of these seven-but i do think -given his proclivity for showmanship, keeping everyone off-balance, and ‘jerking around’ the media-
I do think that having the trump campaign leak a potential list of seven-makes it less likely that his Veep is one of those seven, yes.
I notice that Kim Reynolds, the very popular female governor of Iowa isn’t on the list. I know she endorsed DeSantis and that might be an unforgivable sin for Donald Trump...but if he’s smart... Could go ‘off the board’ and select her.
Mike Pompeo isn’t on the list. He’d be a great, steady choice to offset trump’s more bombastic personality.
I wouldn’t count them out.
But-from the list we’ve been given? I’d go Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, or Byron Donalds-in that order. Rubio and Donald would literally have to move out of Florida to be on the ticket-
Which i think puts Scott in the driver’s seat.
Moreover, he’s been a super advocate for trump over the last six months on the campaign trail. Scott is steady and likable and articulate and gentlemenly, all things that Trump is ‘not’.
It also doesn’t hurt that he’d be an African American face on a GOP ticket.
Elise Stefanik does nothing for me-mainly because she’s a congresswoman who may or may not be ready to assume the presidency- and i doubt she’d really appeal to most suburban women-which would be-presumably-why she’d be selected.
JD Vance is a Maga attack dog from Ohio. We don’t need Ohio. Its’ already in the red column, and trump is his own attack dog. We don’t need two white, male, Maga faces on the ticket. I’d kick Vance off the list first.
And truth be told-veteran political strategists and scientists will tell you that it really doesn’t matter who the lead candidate picks for VP. There’s never been a choice that has-clearly-moved the ticket one way or the other.
I don’t necessarily agree-but I will agree that-this year? -it is ‘all about’ Trump or Biden. Absolutely.
Who Donald Trump selects probably won’t matter much, or move may voters on their own, but i do think it expands the appeal of the ticket if he selects an African American, Hispanic, or woman.
Especially in this racially charged atmosphere- with more black and brown voters than ever before in the modern era- willing to slide over to the GOP side of the aisle.
What i mean is: in this moment-with more blacks and Hispanics open to voting Trump/GOP- having a Tim Scott or a Marco Rubio on the ticket might be just enough to tip a sliver of minority fence-sitters their way.
And in a way that a female selection wouldn’t. Kim Reynolds might move suburban women. Elise Stefanik wouldn’t.
But if they’ve been mentioned, they probably aren’t the person.
I also love Byron Donalds-this young Black Florida congressman whose name is on the list. I’ve talked about him before: very bright. Rhetorically superior to just about anyone else in congress. He’s a little young to be ‘reassuring’ to voters that he could do the job if trump fell ill or died-
But he’s whip smart and could figure it out quickly, i have no doubt.
I assume some of you have seen the new -patently ridiculous-controversy that the black democrats and the leftists in the media have tried to drag Donalds into and smear him with.
He was talking to a predominantly black crowd at a cigar-bar event Tuesday night-and said something that is entirely correct and defensible: that black families were more intact and doing better during the Jim Crow era.
He said this- because- he was making a point about how democrat policies have destroyed the black family since that time-even if LJB and his great society ‘thought’ they were helping. Even if liberals have wanted to claim that ‘they are helping’ as they perpetually expand the welfare state and give African Americans a perpetual ‘lesser status’ in America....so they can play grievance politics.
Byron Donalds wasn’t ‘romanticizing’ the Jim Crow era. He wasn’t ‘yearning for the halcyon days’ of Jim crow.
He was simply referencing the time period- as in: my god, the black family was even doing better during the Jim Crow era in this country, before the democrats bleeped it up.
This is the point he was obviously making... As you will hear in a minute.
But- of course this led to black democrats and their lunatic activists only ‘hearing what they wanted to hear’...and characterizing Donalds as promoting the Jim crow era positively.
Even politico-which is run by lefties but is normally fair- claimed Donalds ‘expressed nostalgia’ for the Jim Crow era. Hakeem Jefferies and other black lawmakers hopped on Donalds and pretended to not know what he was talking about.
It was another scummy attempt to smear an opponent with a fake ‘gotcha’ moment.
Donalds ‘shorthand’s’ the decades of democrat mismanagement and bad policy decisions that led to the erosion of the black family.... buy everyone in the room knows what he’s talking about.
That cut is from CNN-where the black female host tries six different times to pretend that-she! -doesn’t know what he was talking about. And to Donald’s credit-he didn’t let her get away with it.
But here’s what Donalds actually said:
So how is that controversial? So, studies, books, statistics, policy papers, have been written on this subject that you could stack them to the moon. It is virtually irrefutable that-even if LJB and the 60s era democrats were ‘trying to help’ black Americas-their ‘great society’ policies, instead started to destroy it.
And by the way- LJB and the dems of that era-did not-think they were helping, no. They were launching a campaign to buy the votes of America’s black voters....after republicans in congress passed the civil rights era laws-against- against- the southern democrat’s wishes.
LJB was a southern democrat. He knew having a sizable chunk of the black vote slide toward republicans in the 60s would have been devastating to the democrat party moving forward.
So, he launched a vote-buying scheme and a welfare state that democrats in future eras would expand and grow, pretending to be helping America’s poor families...but really only pulling them apart. And it wasn’t only black families. The overly generous welfare state helped destroy rural poor families, too.
When the rules said you could get more govt money if you-weren’t married- and you could get more money-for each new child you had- well-
You know where those policies took us.
Byron Donalds is-dead on-correct.
And i believe Jefferies and other black dems immediately hopped on him because they were mortified that we, five months from an election, might ‘go down that road’.
Imagine it, people: we have more black men and women willing to say they are republicans and/or Trump supporters -publicly- than we have in a very long time.
We have people like Scott and Donalds doing into America’s ‘black districts’ and doing campaign events like this one Donalds was doing here on Tuesday night.
Do you know what happens to the democrats if they allow black Americans to start thinking for themselves? Expressing conservative opinions? And worst of all: revealing how the democrat party has been manipulating black Americans by playing the grievance and race cards for the last 60 years?
They can’t have that!
And so- Bryon Donalds has to be attacked and silenced.
story credit: Real Clear Politics
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here> Democrats fear Byron Donalds and Tim Scott as VP