Former President Donald Trump is reportedly considering Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to be his vice presidential pick if he wins the Republican Party presidential primary.
The news comes as Stefanik announced that she was going to campaign with Trump in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation primaries next week.
According to NBC News, Trump insiders claim the New York congresswoman is at the top of Trump’s list “because she possesses one of the key attributes he’s looking for in a 2024 running mate: loyalty.” One Republican campaign operative told the outlet, “If you’re Trump, you want someone who’s loyal above all else. Particularly because he sees Mike Pence as having made a fatal sin.”
Talk of Stefanik as a potential vice presidential pick, NBC reports, came up during a dinner with Mar-a-Lago members in late December, where the conversation turned to who Trump might pick as his running mate should he win the primary.
Attendees of the event reportedly “raved about [Stefanik’s] viral moment just weeks before, when she grilled three university presidents at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus.” It was during that hearing that the congresswoman repeatedly asked the presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their universities policies on bullying and harassment.
According to one person at the event, when Trump was asked about considering her, he replied, “She’s a killer.”
As NBC notes, Stefanik was once viewed as a “moderate Republican” and worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. In fact, Conservative Review’s Liberty Score currently gives Stefanik a score of 48%, an “F” in its grading system, ranking her above Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), but below Romney. Among her actions criticized by conservatives was her decision to initially vote for the pro-LGBT Equality Act in 2019, only to later reverse her support for the bill. Stefanik was also one of 47 House Republicans in 2022 to vote in favor of writing same-sex marriage into law.
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After Trump won the 2016 election, Stefanik became a staunch defender of him. The congresswoman served on Trump’s 2019 impeachment defense team, and she was one of over a hundred House Republicans to sign an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to nullify Biden’s electoral win. She is currently facing a censure from House Democrats after she referred to January 6 criminal defendants as “hostages.”
Stefanik’s leadership in the House, where she serves as the chair of the House Republican Conference, has been praised by Speaker Mike Johnson, who said of her, “She’s one of the best leaders and best communicators in Congress.”
Stefanik did not rule out the possibility of being Trump’s VP when asked about it during a recent NBC News interview, saying, “Well, I, of course, would be honored to serve in any capacity in a Trump administration.”