Report From Inside Trump Campaign Indicates Likely VP Choice Emerging
His "influence within Trump World is widespread."
Newt Gingrich appears to be emerging as a very likely choice for Donald Trump’s vice presidential slot, and a source within the GOP front-runner’s campaign indicates he has daily communication with the former speaker of the House.
Trump has laid out two criteria that he will be considering when choosing a running mate: 1) Someone with political experience, and 2) someone familiar with the ways of Capitol Hill.
Eliana Johnson, writing for National Review, reports Gingrich’s communication with the Trump campaign is ubiquitous: “‘They talk every day,’ says a source familiar with the relationship, who claims that Gingrich e-mails Trump, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski ‘countless times a day.’ … Gingrich’s influence within Trump World is widespread.”
Johnson added: “Inside Trump’s newly established campaign offices in Washington, D.C., [Gingrich’s] fingerprints are everywhere. ‘Right from the minute I joined we were told that Newt will have his hand in every major policy effort,’ says one Trump aide. ‘So one of the things I do when I’m researching or writing anything, in addition to looking at what Trump has said about anything, I look at what Newt has said.'”
“Gingrich has, in effect, launched his own campaign to secure the nomination,” in Johnson’s estimation.
She notes it should be no surprise that the two click. Afterall, Gingrich oversaw the populist uprising in 1994 that swept the Republican Party into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. In 2016, Trump is riding a very similar wave of rejection of politics-as-usual and a call for sweeping changes in how business is done in the nation’s capital.
Gingrich has been a proponent of Trump’s candidacy during the primary election season, sticking up for him when many in the so-called GOP establishment did not. What the former speaker would bring to the ticket would be policy gravitas and likely many holdout Republicans who still have doubts about the candidate’s conservative bona fides.
Gingrich told Fox News Sunday‘s Chris Wallace earlier this month that he and his wife are busy with film and book projects, but if Trump asked him to take the slot, they “could be lured to a new path.”
h/t: Townhall
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