Welcome to the online version of From the Political Bureauan evening newsletter featuring the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News Politics team from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s campaign issue, Alec Hernández outlines what Donald Trump’s VP candidates have said about accepting the 2020 – and 2024 election results. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd explains why it was necessary to vote on Trump sooner than the fall to debate.
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Where Trump’s VP Candidates Stand on Accepting the 2020 (and 2024) Election Results
By Alec Hernández
The closer the country gets to the 2024 elections, Donald Trump I can’t stop looking back at that one four years ago.
During his campaign, the former president has consistently raised his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him by Democrats. He has even said that he doesn’t actually want to hire anyone in his campaign who accepts that Joe Biden won in 2020.
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Yet a number of politicians considered top candidates to become Trump’s running mate have done just that and must now demonstrate their loyalty to the former president in other ways. Others, however, have long spoken out about their false claims of a rigged election.
Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a staunch Trump supporter on Capitol Hill, who notably voted against certifying Pennsylvania’s election results even after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio has been a megaphone for Trump’s stolen election claims and has indicated he would have refused to certify the election had he been vice president at the time Mike Pence‘s position.
Doug Burgum, Governor of North Dakota has acknowledged that Trump ultimately lost the 2020 election, saying during the GOP’s first primary debate last year that “Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6.” But lately he has attributed Biden’s victory to irregularities in the voting process.
Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina both voted to affirm Biden’s 2020 election victory. Rubio agrees with the former vice president that he did not have the constitutional authority to overturn the election results, while Scott has said Pence “absolutely” did the right thing.
And now, as they duke it out to show Trump they support him, none of these potential vice presidential picks have unequivocally committed to accepting the 2024 election results.
Read more about what these and other VP candidates said about the 2020 and 2024 election results →
The campaign shake-up Biden needed
By Chuck Todd
Whatever happens in the first debate between Biden and Trump, it is guaranteed to be one of the most influential moments of this campaign. And depending on the performance of either party, holding that early debate in June could be the most consequential decision of this campaign.
To say that we are in uncharted waters or uncharted territory is an understatement. But make no mistake: the trajectory of this race for Biden – combined with the outside events that are all now working against the incumbent, namely inflation and Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip – was not sustainable, so the Biden- campaign to do it. something to change it.
It’s possible Biden could have waited until the pre-scheduled debates in September or October hoping for a game-changing moment. But that would have been too close.
Waiting until the fall to create a better contrast with Trump would have limited the options for calling audibles if Plan A didn’t work. Biden needed to shake up this race before the summer convention season and the Olympics.
Perhaps the reason that both Biden and Trump wanted to have this early debate is that they both feared that the Commission on Presidential Debates would ultimately kill Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would qualify to compete in the fall events. By going this early, both candidates are trying to get a one-on-one shot at each other before having to consider Kennedy, assuming he can get enough votes by the fall and qualify at the polls with a sustained support level of 15%. .
An early debate also gives the Biden and Trump campaigns more time to realign with their own conventions, reducing the possibility of one debate ending their campaign. A poor debate performance in the fall could be more politically catastrophic than, say, a week before the Fourth of July. And of course, starting early doesn’t rule out more debates taking place in the fall.
Read more from Chuck here →
That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have any feedback – like it or not – please email us at politicsnieuwsbrief@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
