As Donald Trump’s top campaign aides began a discussion in June 2016 about who the presumptive Republican presidential nominee should select as his running mate, …
As Donald Trump’s top campaign aides began a discussion in June 2016 about who the presumptive Republican presidential nominee should select as his running mate, the candidate piped up with an idea. “I think it should be Ivanka. What about Ivanka as my VP?” Trump asked the assembled group, according to a new book by his former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates set to be published Oct.13. Trump added: “She’s bright, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, and the people would love her!” In Gates’s telling, Trump’s suggestion of naming to the ticket his then-34-year-old daughter – a fashion and real estate executive who had never held elected office – was no passing fancy. Instead, he brought up the idea repeatedly over the following weeks, trying to sell his campaign staff on the idea, insisting she would be embraced by the Republican base, Gates writes. Trump was so taken with the concept of his eldest daughter as his vice president – and so cool to other options, including his eventual selection, then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence – that his team polled the idea twice, according to Gates. It was Ivanka Trump who finally ended the conversation, Gates writes, going to her father to tell him it wasn’t a good idea. Trump eventually came around and selected Pence, after the governor won him over by delivering a “vicious and extended monologue” about Bill and Hillary Clinton at a get-to-know-you breakfast later that summer, according to Gates’s account. “This is not true and there was never any such poll,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said Monday. In an interview last week, Gates said he is not certain Trump would actually have gone through with making his daughter his running mate. But he said he included the anecdote in his new book, first reported by Bloomberg, as a prime example of the kind of unconventional thinking he believes made Trump an appealing candidate. While others might see the episode as a distasteful symbol of Trump’s nepotism, Gates said it shows Trump’s commitment to family, loyalty and ensuring those around him support his agenda and not their own – “the values and assets that Trump cared most about,” he said.
