Former HUD Secretary Ben Carson endorses Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump during a campaign event with the former president on October 29, 2023, in Sioux City, Iowa. | Source: Scott Olson / Getty
As it seemingly becomes all but a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump will win the Republican presidential nomination, an anonymous “source” has claimed to know who the election-denying, four-times indicted alleged fraudster is considering to be his vice presidential running mate.
According to the Calvin Coolidge Project, a self-described “grass-roots movement which seeks to develop, among conservative and libertarian Republicans, an ethos of intellectual discipline,” former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson is at the top of Trump’s list.
Without providing any proof of its claim, the Calvin Coolidge Project posted Wednesday night on the special media app formerly known as Twitter that a “source who is familiar with President Trump’s thinking tells me that @RealBenCarson is the leading frontrunner to be his Vice President choice in 2024 at this time.”
As a result, Ben Carson’s name was among the top trending topics on social media.
As of early Thursday afternoon, the post had been liked nearly 4,000 times with hundreds of users reporting the unconfirmed report as if it was fact.
Carson, for his part, has been far less coy about the 2024 election, readily endorsing Trump last month at a rally in Iowa.
Calling Trump “my friend and your friend, and a friend of America,” Carson regurgitated MAGA talking points that argued in favor of electing the man under a gag order in his civil fraud trial in New York for allegedly inflating the worth of his namesake company.
Carson has been consistent in his lauding support of Trump. Last year, during the infamous U.S. Senate race in Georgia featuring the Trump-endorsed losing candidate Herschel Walker, Carson said attacks on the would-be politician are like slavery in that they’re “meant to divide the Black community.”
Carson also notably took umbrage at President Joe Biden’s stated intentions to nominate a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court before making good on his promise with Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Blaming such a decision on “identity politics,” Carson fails to acknowledge that if selected by Trump to be his running mate, such a decision would likely be made to offset persistent claims of anti-Black racism with optics of a racially diverse Republican presidential ticket.
It would also pit Kamala Harris, the first Black vice president, against Carson in a tactic that could end up siphoning support from a Black electorate that polls show is increasingly straying from Democrats.
According to the most recent presidential poll, Biden and Trump are heavily favored to win their party’s respective nominations. But regarding a head-to-head rematch of the 2020 election, the Messenger/Harris poll conducted by HarrisX and released on Thursday gave Trump the edge by 4 percentage points.
This is America.
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