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Alps distributors, Inc. distributor. Examines

1:00

the top contenders for the job and

1:03

what choosing them would tell us

1:05

about Trump himself in this campaign.

1:16

Mike, somehow this is your first appearance

1:18

on the show. So welcome at

1:21

long last to The Daily. Thank you for having me.

1:23

It's my pleasure. You have spent

1:26

the past few weeks trying to get

1:28

inside Donald Trump's search for a vice

1:30

president. And what is so unusual about

1:32

this search is that we already know what

1:35

Trump wanted in a vice president from his 2016

1:38

campaign when he picked Mike

1:40

Pence. And we know how badly that

1:42

all ended with Trump openly

1:44

denouncing Pence for not helping him

1:47

overturn his 2020 election loss and

1:50

reportedly endorsing calls for Pence's death.

1:52

His hanging at the Capitol on

1:54

January 6. So with all of

1:56

that behind us, what is

1:58

Trump looking like? forces.

18:00

Well, I don't know anything about bankrupting four companies.

18:02

You bankrupt a quarter of a ... Is

18:06

multiple bankruptcies and

18:08

in pretty colorful language. So I'm looking at

18:10

little Marco and I say, man, there's something

18:13

happening with him. Trump

18:15

returned fire, even

18:17

more so, and really just

18:19

demolished Rubio in aggressively personal

18:22

terms. And I see him

18:24

starting to sweat. Like

18:26

I have never seen anything

18:29

like it. He said how much he was

18:31

sweating on the stage. Thank God he has

18:33

really large ears, the biggest ears I've ever

18:35

seen. Made

18:37

fun of his ears, portrayed him

18:39

as a lightweight who shouldn't

18:41

be president, couldn't go toe to toe with

18:44

any other foreign leaders, and really

18:46

set him back politically. You know, I called him

18:48

a lightweight. I said at one point he was

18:50

a lightweight. And I don't

18:52

mean to be insulting, but I

18:54

do describe people somehow well. I

18:59

mean, suffice it to say, by the end of the 2016

19:02

race, the concept that there

19:04

could ever be a Trump-Rubio

19:06

ticket was completely unfathomable. Yeah,

19:08

exactly. But

19:11

what a lot of people don't realize is that

19:13

Rubio really repaired that relationship with

19:15

Trump. Rubio won more votes in

19:17

his Senate race in Florida than Trump did

19:19

for president in Florida. And that was oddly

19:22

important to Trump. He brought that up repeatedly.

19:25

Trump likes winners, right? And Rubio had won more votes

19:27

than him, so there must be—he must

19:29

have missed something. He invited Rubio

19:31

over to the White House early

19:33

on as sort of a charm offensive with

19:36

Rubio. And in the

19:38

next few years, Rubio really did become a

19:40

behind-the-scenes close advisor for Trump on foreign policy

19:42

and some other areas. And

19:44

now, heading into 2024, Trump

19:47

trusts him, views him as a

19:49

valuable ally, and maybe even more

19:51

than that, as a pretty effective

19:53

attack dog. Right now with

19:56

Joe Biden in the White House, our adversaries are

19:58

going to conclude that things they can get away

20:00

with and they can do, because this White House

20:02

is not strong, they're not prepared, they're not even

20:05

competent, and I fear what that means. This is

20:07

a big, big problem. Rubio

20:09

has gotten very aggressive on television

20:11

going after the Biden administration and

20:14

really the president himself. If we have another four years

20:16

of Joe Biden, I don't know what this country's gonna

20:18

look like, but none of us are gonna be

20:20

happy about it. Right. Clearly

20:22

no accident, because he knows

20:24

he's in contention for the VP spot. Absolutely.

20:27

Just to put a fine point on it, you

20:29

would say yes if you were asked to serve as his

20:32

vice presidential nominee. That would be presumptuous

20:34

for me. I think anyone who's offered that job

20:36

to serve this country in the second highest office,

20:38

assuming everything else in your life makes sense at

20:40

that moment, why

20:42

would, if you're interested in serving the country, it's

20:44

an incredible place to serve, but we're getting way

20:46

ahead of our time. So Rubio clearly checks off

20:49

a ton of boxes, TV

20:51

ready, loyal, attack dog,

20:54

doesn't seem to do any harm

20:56

to the ticket. I'm guessing here. He's

20:59

meaningfully older than Vance. Any

21:02

weaknesses we should make sure to touch on when it

21:04

comes to Rubio? Yeah, the risks

21:06

for Rubio are kind of counterintuitive here.

21:09

The big thing is that Trump isn't

21:11

sure he really wants the job. He

21:14

has not sat with Trump in

21:16

the courtroom as others have. He

21:18

hasn't become a fixture at the

21:20

former president's rallies. He's not

21:22

turned himself into furniture at Mar-a-Lago like

21:24

other Republicans. This sort of idea that

21:26

he wants to show Trump, he wants

21:28

the job, but not too badly. It's

21:31

a strategy with a clear logic here.

21:33

I mean, again, we talked about protection

21:36

of Trump's spotlight, but

21:38

I'm told, my reporting is that the strategy

21:40

has kind of confused Trump. I

21:42

talked to someone who sat with Trump the other day

21:45

and Trump asked him point blank, does

21:47

Rubio even want the job? That's

21:50

not a good look for the floor to Senator. Fascinating.

21:52

So the flip side of don't overshadow me is,

21:55

make sure that I feel a sufficient

21:57

amount of your love. And Rubio,

21:59

so far... hasn't shown Trump enough

22:01

love. That's exactly right.

22:03

Okay, I think that brings us now

22:05

to the third of these contenders. And

22:09

probably the least known. This is Doug

22:11

Burgum, the governor of North Dakota,

22:14

who would be, if he

22:16

joins a ticket and wins election, the first

22:18

vice president from the great state of North

22:20

Dakota. So who's Doug Burgum? Who

22:24

is Doug Burgum? Doug Burgum is a kid that

22:26

grew up in a small town, north of North Dakota, 300 people.

22:29

The streets weren't even paved. Burgum

22:31

has amassed his own fortune. Saw my

22:33

first computer and I said, wow,

22:35

that's going to change the world. By

22:38

repeatedly building billion dollar

22:40

companies, including one he

22:43

sold to Microsoft. Had this fantastic run

22:45

as a public company, got acquired by

22:47

Microsoft, and then I joined that team

22:49

and helped build Microsoft. He's

22:51

close friends with the billionaire,

22:53

former executive of Microsoft, and

22:55

has a number of other wealthy,

22:58

rich tech investors on speed dial.

23:00

This is important for Trump because

23:02

he likes having connections to rich

23:05

people who serve as sort of a

23:07

validation for Trump. If you're serving for me, that

23:10

enhances Trump's brand and Trump's self-worth.

23:12

Working with President Trump as a

23:14

governor was like having a beautiful

23:16

breeze at your back. I

23:19

guess I can explain it this way.

23:21

Trump likes to collect wealthy

23:24

white men, wealthy white businessmen like they

23:26

were porcelain dolls. Who are

23:28

we going to send back to the

23:30

White House? Trump! That's

23:33

fantastic. Okay,

23:38

well, besides this rich white porcelain

23:40

dollage that Trump likes, what is

23:42

it about Burgum that has

23:44

drawn Trump's interest in him as a

23:46

potential VP? Yeah, Burgum is

23:48

in his mid-60s, which makes him

23:50

closer to being a generational peer to Trump,

23:52

who's in his late 70s. And

23:55

Trump likes generational peers. Remember, in

23:57

2017, the average age of his cabinet was...

23:59

was 62 years old, which was

24:01

one of the oldest of any recent president.

24:04

And Trump also likes Burgum's

24:06

independence, not just financially, but

24:08

politically. He self-funded his own

24:10

campaign for governor in 2016.

24:14

He was a outsider candidate and

24:16

won that race and

24:19

his reelection without really any help from

24:21

Trump or Trump's political machine. And

24:23

that's important to Trump when it

24:25

comes to who he can trust behind the scenes

24:27

to tell him what he needs to know. He

24:30

doesn't want someone to do that publicly. He doesn't

24:32

want to be embarrassed. He doesn't want to be

24:34

overshadowed. But behind the scenes, he

24:36

does want some back and forth. He does

24:38

want to hear different points of view. And

24:41

when you agree with Trump behind

24:43

the scenes, he wants to know that it's

24:45

not because you're afraid that he might turn

24:47

against you. Other folks who

24:49

owe their entire political rise to Trump

24:51

might have trouble connecting with the former

24:54

president on that level. The

24:56

folks I've talked to have been in the

24:58

room with Bergham and Trump have told me

25:00

they have a very easy dynamic. There's a

25:02

very clear respect on both sides. And

25:05

these guys seem to like each other. Hmm,

25:07

so this is kind of fascinating, Mike. It

25:10

sounds like one of Bergham's biggest advantages is

25:12

that his political career has

25:14

been pretty independent of

25:16

Trump. He didn't start

25:19

out as a Trump critic who then needed

25:21

to bend the knee for his own

25:23

political survival in the same way that

25:25

both Vance and Rubio did. Instead,

25:28

Bergham made his way in politics

25:30

by his own accord. He

25:33

doesn't really owe Trump much of anything.

25:36

And to Trump, that might

25:38

mean Bergham's more willing to

25:40

be candid with him, albeit

25:42

behind the scenes not publicly.

25:44

And on top of all that, he's

25:47

older and therefore less

25:49

of a threat to Trump's spotlight.

25:53

Less at risk of overshadowing him. Yeah,

25:56

that's exactly right. I would sum up Bergham's

25:58

advantages as saying he's probably... in this group

26:01

the safest pick for Trump, but in

26:03

a weird way he's also the

26:05

biggest wild card. And what I mean

26:07

by that is he is

26:10

relatively untested on the national stage, even though

26:12

he did run for president last year, but

26:14

that was really a short-lived campaign.

26:16

If you blink, you missed it. And

26:18

he's not really been on television as

26:21

much as Rubio and Vance in recent years.

26:24

And he is, you know,

26:26

to put it generously, not

26:28

known for thrilling applause lines

26:30

on the campaign trail. And

26:33

he has almost eight years in the

26:35

governor's office in a very, very Republican

26:37

state with some very conservative

26:39

policies that will get dug into

26:41

by the national media. The

26:43

big one, I think, is a hugely restrictive abortion

26:46

law he signed last year as governor. Trump

26:48

is responsible for overturning Roe v.

26:50

Wade, but he sees

26:53

abortion as a real tough issue

26:55

for Republicans. And having a running

26:57

mate who signed a law that

26:59

bans abortions after six weeks, including

27:02

no exceptions for rape or incest

27:04

after six weeks, is going

27:06

to be a tough one for the ticket in the general election.

27:09

So, Burgum does a lot of the things that Trump wants

27:11

in a VP, but the

27:13

problem would seem to be that he might do

27:16

some harm to the ticket, and Trump

27:18

has that do-no-harm role. That's

27:20

absolutely right. When it comes to Trump's

27:22

decision, the former president has a lot

27:24

of things to think about. Mike,

27:28

we've been spending all this time talking

27:30

about what Trump wants in his VP

27:33

in 2024 and how these

27:35

three potential contenders fit into that. But

27:38

what we haven't talked about, to

27:40

circle back to the beginning and

27:42

what Trump did to Mike Pence,

27:44

is what Trump may ask of

27:46

these three guys if they were

27:48

to become his VP, and

27:51

how comfortable these three

27:53

contenders might be in doing

27:55

those things. I mean, everything

27:57

our colleagues have been reporting so far shows that