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Pretend Arizona governor Kari Lake camped out at Mar-a-Lago for several weeks earlier this year in the hopes of convincing Donald Trump to put her on the ticket with him. But she is not the only one who wants a job said not to be worth a bucket of warm p**s. Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) would be happy to get out of South Dakota and move to D.C., even if her job description would simply be: Call up the White House every morning at 8 a.m. to see if the president is still alive, and if so, take the day off. Her other main option after her term is up is to run for the Senate. However, both South Dakota senators, Mike Rounds and John Thune, are likely to be around for many years in the future. So it is basically veep or bust for her.
On Friday, Noem announced her candidacy for the vice presidency by introducing Trump at a rally by saying: "He is the leader, the fighter that our country needs. He has my full and complete endorsement for President of the United States of America." Her endorsement was accompanied by this sign:
Noem isn't the first sitting governor to endorse Trump. Republican Govs. Mike Dunleavy (AK), Jim Justice (WV), and Henry McMaster (SC) beat her to it, but none of them are plausible veeps and Noem is. The only other plausible high-profile female officeholders to endorse Trump so far are Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and neither of them seems to be openly campaigning for the job. Blackburn is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and memories of Sarah Palin still linger in some murky corners of the GOP. Stefanik is young, charismatic, a Harvard graduate (= not stupid) and an opportunist first class. The only problem is that she'd have to give up her safe House seat to run for veep, so she might turn down an offer. Becoming the first female Republican House speaker is a more realistic career goal for her. If you want a list of all the people who have endorsed Trump so far, here it is. There are about 400 of them, including current and former politicians at all levels, plus business leaders, actors, musicians, sports figures, and miscellaneous activists. Because surely the only question that people ask themselves before voting for president is: "Which horse does Brett Favre like?"
In his speech, Trump went over old themes. For example, he said: "They're just destroying our country. And if we don't take it back—if we don't take it back in '24, I really believe we're not going to have a country left." Also he referenced his four indictments by saying: "I'm being indicted for you." It's not exactly: "Christ died for your sins," but we're in that ballpark. Evangelicals in the crowd surely understood it, so he didn't have to explain himself to them. That is a good thing because it makes no sense. If Trump had decided not to run, would "they" have indicted the 7,000 attendees for conspiring to overturn an election and hiding secret defense documents? (V)