What They Said Then: Ranking Trump’s VP Picks By How Brutally They Once Trashed Him

The GOP is littered with converts to the Trumpian cause. While many expressed disgust with former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and conduct when he rode down his golden escalator to declare his candidacy for the White House back in 2015, his romp through the Republican primary and shocking general election victory the next year bought him the loyalty of nearly all his peers.

Still, it seemed as though Trump may have pushed the envelope a bit too far after the January 6 Capitol riot, when many Republicans finally let out the criticism they had been suppressing for the better part of four years. But over the past 18 months, the party has yet again coalesced around their once and seemingly forever standard bearer, leaving Trump with a wealth of options to pick as his running mate through the general election.

On Wednesday, it was reported that Trump has whittled down the candidates to a list of eight: Senators J.D. Vance (R-OH), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Tim Scott (R-SC), and Tom Cotton (R-AR), Representatives Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Governor Doug Burgum (R-ND), and Trump’s ex-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. This is the definitive ranking of these finalists based on how brutally they’ve trashed the man they’re now petitioning for a job.

8. DOUG BURGUM

Despite low name-ID, Burgum has parlayed his brief 2024 presidential campaign into a lottery ticket in the veepstakes.

His odds aren’t bad, and that’s in no small part due to the dearth of barbs he’s directed at the man reviewing his application. That said, he did take a veiled shot at Trump in an interview with ABC News last August.

“My opinion of presidential elections are — they need to be about the future,” he said. “Are they ready to move on? And I think that when we get to next January [when the first nominating contest is held], voters are going to have a chance to decide: Do they want to talk about the future or do they want to talk about the past? I think that a majority of them are going to say, ‘It’s time for us to focus on the future.'”

7. TOM COTTON

Cotton could never have been confused for Mitt Romney or Ben Sasse, but he also hasn’t been a reflexive Trump lackey.

In 2016, Cotton offered a gentle rebuke of Trump over his attacks on a Gold Star family, arguing that as the Republican nominee, Trump should “focus on what’s going to keep this country safe, which in my opinion is Republican plans for our national security and our foreign policy and intelligence policy for the very reason that we don’t want to have to create more Gold Star families in the future” and that “every American” should “speak to Gold Star families tenderly and with respect and even love.”

“Some, like the Khans, obviously support Hillary Clinton. Others support Donald Trump and Republicans, but they certainly deserve to be heard because no one has given a greater sacrifice than have they and their sons and daughters to defend our freedoms,” he continued.

Shortly after the January 6 Capitol riot, Cotton issued a statement calling on those who “attacked the Capitol today” to face “the full extent of federal law” before slamming Trump:

It’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence. And the senators and representatives who fanned the flames by encouraging the president and leading their supporters to believe that their objections could reverse the election results should withdraw those objections. In any event, the Congress will complete its constitutional responsibilities tonight.

6. BEN CARSON

Carson has been a reliable ally of Trump’s for nearly a decade now, but it hasn’t always been this way. While competing with Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, Carson endured some brutal ad hominems from his rival. For the most part, Carson turned the other cheek, but in a couple of notable instances, he returned fire.

On a debate stage with Trump in September 2015, Carson  was asked to weigh in on the differences between himself and Trump and he obliged the moderators, calling the “biggest difference” his own realization of  “where my success has come from.”

“I don’t any way deny my faith in God. And I think that probably is a big difference between us,” he added.

In another case shortly before the 2016 Iowa Caucus, Carson lambasted Trump for spreading “rumors” about him. “He was very dishonest,” said Carson. “He acts like a politician. Politicians do things that are politically expedient.”

“One of the reasons that I got into this race is that I’m disgusted with the level of dishonesty and the lack of integrity,” he continued.

Carson has also conceded that Trump could have “tempered down” his rhetoric at the rally he held in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

5. ELISE STEFANIK

The GOP House Conference Chair is well-known for her fiery defenses of Trump now, but she used to be a moderate who was largely critical of Trump’s behavior.

In 2015, Stefanik said that “in the presidential field, there are some candidates — who over the long run and they’ve already started this process — are somewhat disqualifying themselves with untruthful statements” and who weren’t “willing to really talk about the substance of issues.”

In other instances, she criticized him for his “insulting” treatment of women, arguing that his words had “hurt” the GOP’s attempt to reach out to women.

“Donald Trump’s inappropriate, offensive comments are just wrong — no matter when he said them or whatever the context,” submitted Stefanik after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape in 2016.

She also expressed disagreement with Trump’s support for an overt Muslim ban as well as his call for a border wall.

4. BYRON DONALDS

Donalds has emerged as a ubiquitous and passionate Trump surrogate on cable news and campaign events in recent years, but back before Trump officially entered Republican politics, he was an outspoken critic of Trump.

In April 2011, Donalds called Trump “a huge distraction” who “cares more about himself than the country.”

“But I could care less about him,” he added. A month later, Donalds celebrated Trump’s decision not to seek the presidency that year, writing “Thank God!”

In other posts from that year and the next, Donalds criticized Trump for being a “self-promoter yelling about 25%  tariffs on China,” as well as for his stances on various issues.

3. TIM SCOTT

Scott is in the midst of a humiliating campaign to be Trump’s running mate and has worked with the former president on issues like taxes and criminal justice reform in the past. But he’s also harshly condemned him before.

After the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, Scott said he wasn’t going to “defend the indefensible” while laying into Trump’s response to the rally, where a counter protester was killed.

“What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority,” argued Scott. “That moral authority is compromised… There’s no question about that.”

In 2019, Scott again rebuked Trump on the issue of race, this time over Trump telling four Democratic members of Congress to “go back” to the countries that matched their ethnicity.

“The President interjected with unacceptable personal attacks and racially offensive language,” wrote Scott in a statement. “No matter our personal disagreements, aiming for the lowest common denominator will only divide our nation further.”

In 2020, Scott was critical of Trump’s failure to condemn the Proud Boys during a debate with Joe Biden.

“White supremacy should be denounced at every turn. I think the president misspoke, and he needs to correct it. If he doesn’t correct it, I guess he didn’t misspeak,” said Scott at the time. Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump’s communications director at the time, responded by stating that she didn’t “think that there’s anything to clarify.”

2. J.D. VANCE

Senator Vance may be well aware that he owes his Senate seat to Trump now — he was flailing in the GOP primary until he secured Trump’s endorsement — but he was once extremely critical of the man he’s grown to love.

Back when he was famous only for his book Hillbilly Elegy, Vance took pains to let the world know how he felt about Trump.

In a 2016 interview, he said that he was a “Never Trump guy” and insisted he “never liked him,” and in a tweet from the same year, he called Trump an “idiot.” Vance also toyed with the idea of voting for Hillary Clinton over the Republican nominee, whom he called “reprehensible.”

In 2022, a college roommate of Vance’s also came forward to reveal that the Ohio senator messaged him the following back in 2016:

I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America’s Hitler.

Even some Never Trumpers today would balk at that comparison.

1. MARCO RUBIO

Who else?

Rubio and Trump exchanged many a bitter insult as rivals in the 2016 presidential primary, and the former could have earned the top spot for this all-time comment on Trump’s anatomy alone: “He’s like 6’2’’, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5’2’’. Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands?”

But that’s somehow just the tip of the iceberg. Rubio has called Trump a “con artist,” “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency,” and denounced his rallies as “frightening, grotesque, and disturbing.”

“He [Trump] put out a picture of me having makeup put on me at the debate, which is amazing to me that the guy with the worst spray tan in America is attacking me for putting on makeup,” said Rubio at a 2016  campaign event. “Donald Trump likes to sue people, he should sue people for whoever did that to his face.”

In an interview that March, Rubio made a prediction to CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“For years to come, there are many people on the right, in the media and voters at large, that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump,” said Rubio.

If only he knew then that he’d one day become a gleeful member of the fan club he once derided.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.