Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?
"Making America great again" was the casual reply."
Yesterday, the New York Times reported an indisputable bombshell: Donald Trump has been offering prospective Vice Presidential nominees the chance to run the entire executive office — domestically and internationally:
One day this past May, Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was "really not prepared to be president of the United States," and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?
When Kasich's adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr.explained that his father's vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?
"Making America great again" was the casual reply.
Not only is this story sourced from the office of the Governor of Ohio, and former Republican presidential candidate, but it is also consistent with the Trump campaign's prior, explicit statements as early as May 2016:
Manafort sat down with the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman for a fairly long interview, and while the two covered quite a bit of ground, there was one exchange in particular that stood out for me.The vice presidential pick will also be part of the process of proving he's ready for the White House, Manafort said.
"He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn't want to do. He sees himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO."
Yes, Melania's plagiarism was newsworthy (and fun), and Cruz's non-endorsement was newsworthy (and fun), but how in the world do the above revelations generate less news coverage? (It sure as hell can't be that they are less fun.)
What's further amazing is that at least in the case of Dick Cheney we had a narrative of a powerful VP assuming and amassing unprecedented power. Here, the presidential candidate, the top-of-the-ticket, is actively seeking to give up power in advance. With that plan, Trump then went out to pick a VP out of an extremely limited pool of willing nominees and by considering ordinary, mundane political considerations.
The end result is that voters don't even know what policies they are voting for, or whether the true inauguration speech was the VP nominee's speech last night. How is this out-in-the-open and simultaneously a non-story?
Cynics obviously may say "Great, let anybody other than Trump be in charge," but that ignores that this (i) is just an added level of chaos and danger on top of an already untenable scenario, and (ii) should be an irrefutable, disqualifying argument today. Simply . . . it should be the most important story of the campaign yet.
<tap> <tap> Is this microphone turned on?
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