Rubio Passed Over For VP Pick As Trump Announces Selection

MILWAUKEE, WI — After weeks of speculation on who will be his running mate, Donald Trump announced that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance is his choice to run as vice president on the 2024 Republican ticket, CNN reported. The campaign confirmed the choice.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Vance, 39, served in the U.S. Marines, graduated from Yale Law School and wrote the bestselling book “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was one of three top contenders for the job, along with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Vance. All three men are expected to speak this week at the convention, as is former rival Gov. Ron DeSantis, The Associated Press reported.

The announcement came on the heels of an assassination attempt on the former president during a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania that left an innocent bystander and the shooter dead, and two others hospitalized.

In 2022, Rubio won his third term in the U.S. Senate, defeating Democrat U.S. House Rep. Val Demings. He is the first Florida Republican to win three terms in the U.S. Senate, according to NBC News.

Rubio is also the longest-serving Hispanic elected official in the state.

In the weeks ahead of the GOP national convention, which began Monday in Milwaukee and runs through Thursday, Rubio was called a top contender for the VP selection by political watchers.

The vice-presidential pick is set to speak on Wednesday, according to the convention schedule.
Trump has said he planned a dramatic reveal of his vice president at the convention to make it more “exciting.”

“It’s like a highly sophisticated version of ‘The Apprentice,’” he quipped in a radio interview last week, referring to the show he once hosted that featured him firing contestants on camera.

One complication with Rubio joining the ticket would have been that the Constitution requires presidential and vice presidential candidates to come from different states, meaning Rubio might have to change his official residency, Florida Politics reported.

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard University, told ABC News that “none of Florida’s 30 electoral votes may be cast this December for both Trump and Rubio unless Rubio or Trump ‘ceases to be an inhabitant’ of Florida before Dec. 17, 2024,” which is when the electoral college votes.

Tribe said Rubio could still keep his Senate seat even if he does change his Florida residency because the Constitution says a senator must be an “Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen,” and Rubio lived in Florida when elected in 2022.

Some pundits have suggested Rubio could change his residency to Florida, where his family lived when he was a child.

Rubio, 53, the son of two immigrants from Cuba, was born in Miami. Before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio served as a city commissioner in West Miami and as speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

Rubio married his wife, Jeanette, in 1998. They have four children: Amanda, Daniella, Anthony, and Dominick.

He is the vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Committee on Foreign Relations.

The consideration of Rubio to the Trump ticket seems to signal their contentious relationship during the 2016 presidential race, when the former president regularly called the shorter senator “Little Marco,” has been set aside.

Rubio then told supporters at a rally that Trump was always calling him “little Marco” but that Trump has disproportionately small hands. “Have you seen his hands? … And you know what they say about men with small hands,” Rubio said. “You can’t trust them.”

Trump then brought up the comment at a televised debate on March 3, 2016, AP reported.

“Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands — if they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you,” he said.