Report: Rubio Floated as VP Pick

by Sharon Rondeau

(Mar. 21, 2024) — At approximately 2:41 PM EDT Thursday, Fox News’s “America Reports” co-anchor John Roberts, in an interview with third-term Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R), remarked to Rubio that he is on the “short list” of vice-presidential choices of 2024 Republican presidential presumptive nominee Donald J. Trump.

The Washington Examiner reported the development Thursday morning, writing, “Several sources confirmed to NBC News and CBS News that Rubio’s star is rising among the ever-growing list of vice presidential candidates who could join Trump’s 2024 campaign.”

“Are you ready to change your voter registration?” Roberts asked Rubio, in an apparent acknowledgment of the 12th Amendment‘s mandate that presidential and vice-presidential candidates on the same ticket cannot hail from the same state.

Rubio again endorsed Trump in January.

Non-committal in his reply to Roberts, Rubio reportedly told NBC News, “I think anybody who would be offered that should be honored, but I’ve never spoken to anybody in the Trump world about it.”

Other reported “short-list” contenders include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, and Trump’s HUD secretary, Dr. Ben Carson.

The list appears to have grown since Trump appeared to secure the Republican presidential nomination following the March 12 primaries.

In 2015 Rubio launched his own presidential campaign but withdrew following the Florida March primary, endorsing Trump the following month. Trump would go on to win the White House in what many considered to be an upset over Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

At the time, many in The Post & Email‘s readership questioned Rubio’s eligibility as per the “natural born Citizen” requirement in Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.

Born in Miami in 1971, Rubio reports his parents were “immigrants from Cuba” and not U.S. citizens when he was born, which some scholars believe “natural born Citizen” signifies.

Of that aspect of Rubio’s life, his Wikipedia entry states:

His parents were Cubans who immigrated to the United States in 1956 during the regime of Fulgencio Batista, two and a half years before Fidel Castro ascended to power after the Cuban Revolution.^[4] His mother made at least four return trips to Cuba after Castro’s takeover, including a month-long trip in 1961.^[4] Neither of Rubio’s parents was a U.S. citizen at the time of Rubio’s birth,^[5][6] but his parents applied for U.S. citizenship and were naturalized in 1975.^[4

Although not defined in the Constitution or any other founding document, the “natural born Citizen” clause is often attributed to Founding Father John Jay, who became New York’s first governor and the nation’s first U.S. Supreme Court chief justice. During the Constitutional Convention, Jay sent a letter to George Washington in which he wrote:

Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolved on, any but a natural born Citizen.

At 3:32 p.m., in a discussion with former White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and former Hillary Clinton adviser Philippe Reines, “The Story” anchor Martha MacCallum again raised the possibility of Rubio’s vice-presidential candidacy with a specific reference to the fact that he “comes from the same state” as Trump.

Conway responded by stating that to avoid that pitfall, Rubio could change his voter registration, as Dick Cheney had in July 2000 prior to being named George W. Bush’s running-mate. Rubio could re-register as a voter in “Michigan,” “Pennsylvania” or some other state, Conway suggested, though she acknowledged he would have to relinquish his Senate seat if that took place.

As with virtually all political commentators, Conway has not acknowledged the “natural born Citizen” question in regard to Rubio or any other presidential or vice-presidential candidate, stating in an earlier Fox News appearance that the requirement is “U.S. citizen.”

Some reports say Vivek Ramaswamy, who suspended his presidential campaign in January following a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, is also on Trump’s short list; his birth circumstances mirror those of Rubio’s.

Former South Carolina Governor and former 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is also frequently reported to be in contention. However, both surrogates and Trump himself claim Haley is not under consideration.

During the final weeks of her campaign, Haley said she was not interested in the prospect of becoming a vice-presidential candidate.