by Frank Holmes, reporter
President Donald Trump has repeatedly announced that he has chosen his running mate — and it sounds like his team accidentally just let the cat out of the bag.
The speculation really cranked up when one of his rivals, Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, dropped out of the primaries after his fourth-place showing in the Iowa Caucus and endorsed Trump.
The next morning, Ramaswamy electrified a Trump rally in New Hampshire—and every news outlet in America noticed what that crowd was chanting.
“VP! VP! VP!” said the crowd in Atkinson over and over.
BREAKING: Trump crowd chants "VP VP VP" after Vivek gets done speaking. Trump says "he's going to be working with us for a long time" pic.twitter.com/NV8P6hKrET
— George (@BehizyTweets) January 17, 2024
Everyone knows campaigns like to have tight control over crowds and events, so it’s possible someone in the campaign coached the people to chant… or not.
Bad news for the crowds, and Vivek: Sources inside the Trump orbit have said the president is not actively considering Ramaswamy as his next vice president.
“I know who the next vice president is going to be. I can’t reveal my sources, but it’s not Vivek,” Sebastian Gorka, a Trump adviser, told Eric Bolling on Newsmax Wednesday night. “I told him a year ago, ‘You shouldn’t be president. You can’t beat President Trump. You’d have a great place in a second Trump administration.”
Bolling asked the question everyone wants to know: Who did Trump pick?
Gorka declined to name names, but he gave a few hints.
“It’s going to be a guy. It’s going to be somebody that nobody is talking about, an amazing patriot who’d actually be a real VP who can get stuff done,” said Gorka.
Bolling asked if Trump had secretly tapped Gorka himself.
“Dude, I wasn’t born here. You’d have to change the Constitution,” said Gorka, the host of the “America First” radio show.
The U.S. Constitution says the vice president must be able to succeed to the presidency in the event that the president dies. That takes Gorka, who was born in London to parents who had fled Communist Hungary, out of the running.
His fellow panelist, Julie Kelly of American Greatness, suggested that Vivek Ramaswamy—who has a Yale Law degree—should be considered for attorney general.
“I really think he would go in, be very aggressive, clean house, and expose a lot of the dirt and corruption of the Department of Justice to the American people,” she said.
Bolling said he hoped it would be Arkansas Governor and former White House spokeswoman Sara Huckabee Sanders.
“I was hoping for Ben Carson,” said Gorka.
But “it’s neither,” Gorka insisted.
So, who is it?
Some clarity came the next morning—once again, on Newsmax—from directly inside the Trump family.
This morning, Donald Trump Jr. commented on the state of the 2024 primary race on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America,” when the conversation turned to the vice presidential slot.
“I would do whatever I could to make sure it wasn’t Nikki Haley,” said the president’s son.
When the host asked if Trump would consider a fellow presidential candidate, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the president’s son seemed lukewarm.
“You’re never going to rule out somebody who’s a leading contender. It doesn’t mean that’s who you go with,” he said.
Out of nowhere, he said, “I’d love to see a Tucker Carlson. I’d love to see people who are principly in alignment and aggressive.”
The host asked if Tucker Carlson was being vetted.
“It clearly would be on the table,” replied Trump Jr. “They certainly agree on stopping the never-ending wars. I would love to see that happen. That would certainly be a contender.”
How about Ben Carson?
“What a great American,” said Trump Jr. “I’d love to see that. Ben’s almost too nice for politics. That may be the only problem: Can you withstand the insanity?”
But Donald Trump Jr. threw out a name that no one had expected: “I’d love to see a J.D. Vance,” the America-First U.S. senator from Ohio, said the president’s son.
Vance, who recalled his rise from poverty in the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, has become a fixture on Trump-aligned media since crushing Democrat Tim Ryan—who pretended to be a blue-collar Democrat—in 2022.
In office, Vance has focused on border security, opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine, and rebuilding the middle class—a true MAGA agenda. His position on abortion and transgender surgeries for kids align him with most of his party’s socially conservative base.
If Vance leaves the Senate, Gov. Mike DeWine would appoint another Republican until a special election could be held—so there’s no danger of flipping a Senate seat.
In 2016, Donald Trump picked a Midwesterner as his running mate—someone he thought was an America First conservative.
Will Trump pick the genuine item in 2024?
Don’t count J.D. Vance out as a possible vice presidential candidate. And remember, you heard it at The Horn News first.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”