Former President Donald Trump must carefully choose a running mate who will play a crucial role as a “top adviser” on critical issues, especially immigration, according to former Trump aide Sam Nunberg. Speaking on Breitbart News Saturday, Nunberg suggested that Trump’s chances of winning the election would be significantly enhanced by running a competent campaign, selecting the right vice president, and making the election a referendum on Biden.
Nunberg, who now supports Trump, initially favored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary race, believing him to be the most electable candidate after the midterm elections.
“I also made a strategic assumption that were Donald Trump to get the nomination, all these polls that we were seeing late last year showing President Trump with a large lead over Joe Biden would suddenly immediately flip, and Joe Biden’s numbers — his favorable numbers, his job performance numbers — would also suddenly, surprisingly…shoot up, and it would seem that it would be a very, very tenuous proposition for the Republicans heading into the fall,” he said.
“Frankly, I was dead wrong. I was 100 percent wrong,” he said. “Donald Trump, as of today, regardless of what you hear from anybody in the mainstream media…Donald Trump is the favorite. Were the election held today, Donald Trump would beat Joe Biden.”
“Now the election is not going to be held today, but what it does show is that the wind is at Donald Trump’s back, that Joe Biden is the weakest president heading into reelection in modern history,” he explained, pointing to the weaknesses of Vice President Kamala Harris as well.
“If you put people anonymously in polls, nobody thinks that Joe Biden did a better job on foreign policy. Nobody thinks Joe Biden did a better job on the border. Nobody thinks Joe Biden did a better job on the economy than Donald J. Trump,” he said, emphasizing that if Trump “runs a competent campaign, if he picks the right kind of vice president, if we’re able to focus on Biden — make it a referendum on Biden — Donald Trump should be able to win this election.”
Nunberg recommended that Trump make a strategic decision when selecting his vice president, considering the individual as a “course correction,” a quasi-independent third-party candidate.
“What I mean is, is that he puts his VP as a referendum, as you’re voting on a certain issue,” he said, identifying the number one issue that he believes Biden will lose on as immigration.
Under Biden’s presidency “in three and a half to four years, you will have had eight million illegals — at a minimum, that’s eight million, that’s what the government is saying — that are dispersed across his country. You will have had policies that he immediately reversed on day one when he came into the Oval Office from President Trump’s policies,” he said, explaining that Trump should pick someone and “say that this…person’s job is going to be to immediately…report to me day to day on immigration, on deportations, on closing the border, on dealing with Mexico and the other countries in that area on enforcement, on possible military action against the cartels.”
“Trump will be outspent by possibly, you know, half a billion dollars going into the fall. The one thing that they can’t do is…if he has a VP that literally they’re just for immigration, that’s going to be an issue when somebody goes to vote and presses that button, they’re voting whether or not they support Joe Biden’s immigration. They’re going to have to think about it. And for me, that would be somebody like General Jack Keane, let’s say,” he said, also floating former Homeland Border Security Adviser Tom Homan.
“Don’t judge the person on anything else, if you want, you know, this person is literally going to be my top adviser. We’re going to be running on dealing with this immigration problem…This person is going to be in charge of…getting these people out of this country from anywhere from New York City to the Rio Grande. Doesn’t matter. I’m going to give this person full authority. I’m going to be ready with an attorney general,” Nunberg said, dismissing some of the names he has heard. If Trump wants to go the politician route, however, Nunberg suggested Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who has a “tremendous story.”
“He understands the struggles of America. He understands the opioid crisis. He’s a well-educated family man. That would be somebody that I would like for him to strongly consider,” he said, emphasizing, again, the importance of picking a running mate who will focus on the issue of immigration.
