>>20485847
In the first Trump administration, far too many advisers and bureaucrats thought they had been elected president. They actively sought to undermine Trump’s MAGA agenda.
You know their names by now from all of the CNN “exposes” of rebellion within the Trump ranks:
Gen. James Mattis and Mark Esper at the Department of Defense; Christopher Wray (still) at the FBI; Bill Barr at the Department of Justice; Steve Mnuchin at the Department of the Treasury; Gary Cohn and Larry Kudlow deep inside the tent at the National Economic Council; Rob Porter as White House staff secretary; John Kelly and Mick Mulvaney as chiefs of staff; John Bolton and H.R. McMaster at the National Security Council; and even Mr. Pence himself, not because he opposed the Trump agenda but because his own chief of staff, Marc Short, was at once a Koch network puppet and puppet master of Mr. Pence himself.
At different times, I had to fight every single one of them in defense of the Trump agenda. Mr. Trump’s next vice president seems unlikely to be cut from the same cloth.
Third, Mr. Trump may want his next vice president to be a master of the policy process. Over my four years in the Trump White House, I had to move quickly up a steep learning curve to move the boss’s executive orders and presidential memoranda in what I would come to refer to as “Trump Time.” Yet I had to move these powerful policy instruments through a bureaucratic maze riddled with needless layers of review and deep state sappers.
My old boss will no doubt remember the difficulties and delays he faced, particularly early on with his tariffs, getting the MAGA agenda through that deep state gauntlet. Accordingly, he may put a high value on a vice president who understands that process from Day One and who will be at the vanguard of swiftly working that process.
Fourth, Mr. Trump will surely want his next vice president to be a master of the media. As I learned in the White House, it’s easy to go on Trump-friendly media like Sean Hannity’s show. Yet it’s flat-out treacherous and possibly even career-ending walking into the lion’s dens of CNN or MSNBC or the Sunday shows of the Never Trump ABC, CBS and NBC.
If you don’t believe 10 seconds of saying stupid stuff in front of a TV camera can end a career, watch the clip of Mr. Mulvaney, then the acting chief of staff, dig himself a “quid pro quo” grave on Ukraine. Or cringe at Sean Spicer forever crippling his tenure as press secretary on his first day on the job with an inaugural “largest audience ever” gaffe.
Know this: The nanosecond Mr. Trump announces his VP pick, he or she will have to be seasoned enough to weather what will be a withering storm and a glaring, often blinding media spotlight. Mr. Trump’s vice president must be out of the gate ready for that challenge.
Finally, Mr. Trump may also want his next VP to be as tireless a campaigner as Mr. Trump is himself. Mike “Et Tu, Brute” Pence not only readily embraced the campaign trail, but his finest moments were his debates with an out-of-control Tim Kaine in 2016 and an arrogant and condescending Kamala Harris in 2020 — that pesky Democrat fly on Mr. Pence’s head notwithstanding.
Mr. Trump will likely demand no less of his next VP. I’m sorry it won’t and can’t be Mike, whom I liked but folded under pressure. Of course, I’m not sorry it won’t be Nikki Haley either.
• Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China hawk. This piece originally appeared at http://peternavarro.substack.com.
Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.