The front-runner for former President Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate outlined five criteria she wants to see in his next vice president in a Fox News interview Thursday.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is favored by betting markets to win the coveted VP slot after the 45th president revealed she was on his shortlist of candidates.
Noem shared her ideal criteria for Trump’s ticket mate without firmly addressing the speculation over her own chances.
When asked if she’s under VP consideration, Noem asserted Trump should pick someone meeting five key benchmarks,
“I’m all in to do what I can to help the team. He needs somebody that actually is not part of the swamp, I think. He needs a business owner. He needs somebody who’s been a commander in chief, somebody who makes decisions when things get tough. Those are his qualifications, and he needs to know he can have somebody around him that trusts him and he trusts and will fight.”
And Noem said that whomever is named must tirelessly battle for Trump’s agenda as president:
“He’s got a lot of jobs to do when you’re president of the United States. He needs to have people on his team that fight for him every single day,” she said.
“So, when he picks whoever it is a vice president, I’ll support whoever he picks, and I’m going to make sure that I’m someone who still continues to defend and fight for his policies,” Noem said.
While not openly vying for the position, Noem pledged supporting whomever Trump taps as his running mate when he likely wins the 2024 nomination.
Beyond outlining vice presidential credentials, Gov. Noem also blasted President Joe Biden for the chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border.
If Biden would simply “reinstate the policies that President Trump had in place, and we’d be in a whole different situation.”
“I have deployed National Guard to the southern border to stand with Texas five different times,” she said. “We have another group that is going to be going down starting in April. It’s an engineering unit that will be actually building border.”
“It will be building the infrastructure needed to really stop a lot of these military-aged men that are coming into this country for very nefarious reasons,” Noem told Fox News.
South Dakota’s National Guard deployed 60 soldiers to the border for three months.
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The Horn editorial team