Ex-Trump WH Official Warned Of The Liabilities And โ€œMajor Vulnerabilitiesโ€ That Come With Donaldโ€™s Controversial Running Mate Choice

Maybe not one of Trump's best decisions...


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**DISCLAIMER: This article was first published in July of 2024** 

After more than a year of bizarre back and forth, former President and now-Republican 2024 presidential nominee Donald J. Trump formally announced his vice presidential running mate pick, less than 48 hours after he was the target of an unhinged assassination attempt at his Pennsylvania rally.

The big announcement was made just in time for it all to be certified during the first evening of the Republican National Convention.

As weโ€™re all aware now, Trump ultimately went with Ohioโ€™s far-Right Republican Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate pick.

Vance was a controversial choice, to say the least, as no one will soon forget his law school roommateโ€™s receipts that showed Vance compared Donald Trump to none other than Adolf Hitler.

Now, one of Trumpโ€™s former high-ranking White House officials has spoken out to talk about just how big of a โ€œgambleโ€ Donaldโ€™s VP choice really was.

Donald Trumpโ€™s former White House communications official, Alyssa Farah Griffin, spoke with CNNโ€™s Anderson Cooper on the heels of the news and said that J.D. Vance is actually a very effective communicator, but the skeletons that the senator and VP candidate has in his closet, ranging from extremist political ideas and positions to blatant attacks against Trump himself, shouldnโ€™t be ignored.

โ€œItโ€™s a strategic gamble, but I think it speaks to just how confident the Trump campaign is,โ€ Griffin told CNN.

โ€œStrategic gamble, why?โ€ Cooper questioned.

โ€œThere are major vulnerabilities with J.D. Vance,โ€ Griffin answered. โ€œYou have tons of times that heโ€™s been on the record, back when he was a Never Trumper, calling the most terrific names that you could โ€ฆ Americaโ€™s Hitler, among others.โ€

โ€œBut heโ€™s also someone โ€” his talent, to give him credit, heโ€™s incredibly savvy,โ€ the former Trump official goes on to explain. โ€œHe can appear on mainstream media and give a coherent, eloquent version of MAGA and go toe to toe with the best interviewer. But then heโ€™ll appear on extremely far-right media where heโ€™s said much more outrageous things that Iโ€™m sure Democrats everywhere are digging up now to portray him as the most extreme version of MAGA.โ€

What this means, according to Griffin, is that โ€œThereโ€™s going to be a big dump of some of the things he said on Steve Bannonโ€™s โ€˜War Roomโ€™ and elsewhere that I think the campaign needs to be ready for, whereas a Doug Burgum would be about as safe as can be. However, J.D. Vance, I think, really resonates in key Pennsylvania. Heโ€™s got the story, heโ€™s got that national profile, so thereโ€™s some pros and some major cons.โ€

You can watch Griffinโ€™s appearance on CNN here:

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

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Andrea Thompson
Andrea has written political opinion stories for over a decade with a passion for center-left policies. Andrea is no longer a writer at Political Tribune and her X account is here: https://x.com/theliberalmommy

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