Former U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally ahead of the Republican caucus in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Jan. 27, 2024.
Ronda Churchill | Reuters
Donald Trump has picked a vice presidential running mate, and plans to announce his decision around 4:30 p.m. ET during the first day of the Republican National Convention, NBC News reported Monday.
Two of the top remaining contenders, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have been told that Trump will not pick them, sources told NBC.
It is unclear what has or has not been told to Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, another top prospect in the veepstakes.
Fox News reported earlier Monday that Trump would reveal his vice presidential pick within hours of the RNC kickoff.
“He did confirm that he’s going to make a VP choice today,” Fox’s Bret Baier said on the network’s air after speaking with Trump over the phone.
Trump also told Baier, “there’s other surprises to come,” the news anchor reported.
This combination photo shows, from left, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio; Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
AP
Vance and Rubio both were once vocal Trump critics. Vance in 2016 had called Trump a “total fraud,” while Rubio had slammed Trump as a “con artist” while running against him in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.
Burgum ran against Trump in the current presidential primary cycle, though he largely avoided directly criticizing the ex-president at that time.
All three men have become aggressive cheerleaders for Trump as the veepstakes heated up.
Vance and Burgum, for instance, both appeared outside of Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York City to decry the prosecution of the presumptive Republican nominee.
After the jury in that trial convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Rubio compared the whole affair to show trials carried out in Cuba under the communist regime of Fidel Castro.
Trump’s VP announcement is scheduled to come in the middle of a deluge of major national news — including a failed assassination attempt against the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend.
The attack, which left one rally attendee dead and Trump with a minor injury, sent shockwaves across the country and spurred condemnations of violence across the political aisle.
President Joe Biden, in an Oval Office address after the Trump rally shooting, urged Americans to lower the temperature of political rhetoric and reaffirm the democratic norms of civil disagreement and decency.
Meanwhile, Trump’s bevy of legal battles were shaken up Monday morning, when federal Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the criminal case charging the former president with illegally retaining classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
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