Ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy is urging former President Donald Trump to pick Nikki Haley as his running mate.
During the New York Times’s DealBook Summit, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked McCarthy who he believes Trump should choose.
“If I was a political person, and I was going to advise somebody, you’re going to pick the vice president that’s about addition, not subtraction. So you’re not going to pick somebody that already equates to you,” McCarthy replied.
“Now if I was picking for purely political decisions, what it looks like today is the anti-Trump vote is going to Nikki Haley,” he continued.
Haley is a staunch neoconservative who many have compared to infamous war hawks like John McCain and John Bolton — neither of whom Trump is very fond of. Her appetite for war and intervention seems unlikely to fit well within Trump's "America First" position.
McCarthy explained that Trump should try to win over those Republicans who dislike him by choosing someone that they like. When asked who that is, he said Haley.
“I think it would be Nikki Haley, in my view. But the question is: Who you select, will they serve? So that’s another question you have to have. And it’s about addition.”
Trump has nicknamed Haley "birdbrain" and repeatedly called out her globalist positions.
“Do you think she would serve?” Sorkin asked.
“It’s up to Nikki,” McCarthy replied. “But this is a bigger question for Trump: If his campaign is about renew, rebuild and restore, he’ll win. If it’s about revenge, he’ll lose. The only person that’s going to determine that is — not his campaign ad — is him.”
McCarthy has not yet endorsed Trump for reelection.
“The campaign is still going. There’s a very good chance I would endorse President Trump,” McCarthy said, later saying, “I believe President Trump will be our nominee and I believe President Trump will get reelected.”
Haley has been hovering around second place in the polls, along with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and America First businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump remains the clear frontrunner, leading the pack by approximately 50 points in many polls.
Haley was recently endorsed by the Americans for Prosperity Action, Charles Koch's political organization.
“Americans for Prosperity—the political arm of the China First, America Last movement—has chosen to endorse a pro-China, open borders, and globalist candidate in Nikki ‘Birdbrain’ Haley,” Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung said of the endorsement.
