Trump Adds Greg Abbott to Dumpster Fire V.P. Short List

Donald Trump says he is “absolutely” considering plucking Texas Governor Greg Abbott out of the Lone Star state to plop him into the West Wing.

“Certainly, he would be somebody that I would very much consider,” Trump said in a joint appearance with Abbott on Fox News’s Hannity Thursday, describing the Texan as a “spectacular man.”

So far, Abbott has played a key (if informal) role in Trump’s campaign, bolstering the GOP front-runner’s fearmongering on border security by prolonging a standoff between Texas law enforcement and the federal government over a length of concertina wire along the Rio Grande section of the U.S.-Mexico border. That showdown radically escalated in January when 25 Republican governors threw their hat behind Abbott, warning they would send their state’s National Guard troops down to defend Texas’s cause if President Joe Biden attempted to enforce a Supreme Court ruling declaring that the state had stepped outside of its jurisdiction by preventing federal agents from doing their jobs.

On the other side of things, Trump has been urging Republican lawmakers to kill any deals on border security in an effort to artificially inflame the issue with U.S. voters and hurt Biden’s chances at reelection. And it’s worked: Immigration is now the central topic of the 2024 presidential election, with 28 percent of Americans claiming it is their top concern—8 percent more than reported in January, according to a February Gallup poll.

Abbott’s name joins a fairly long short list that Trump confirmed last week during a Fox News town hall. Those options include onetime Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—the last of whom has already, adamantly, announced that he is “not doing that.”