President Trump wanted to make his oldest daughter his 2016 running mate, a campaign insider claims in a new book.
Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, writes that the president pushed Ivanka Trump to be his pick for vice president for weeks, insisting she would fare well with the base of the Republican Party.
“I think it should be Ivanka. What about Ivanka as my VP?” Trump asked, describing his 34-year-old daughter at the time as “bright, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, and the people would love her!”
Gates claims that Trump was so excited by the idea that his team polled the idea of Ivanka as his running mate twice, in excerpts of his book, first reviewed by Bloomberg News.
Ivanka eventually declined the idea, telling her father it wasn’t a good idea. Her dismissal eventually led Trump to now-Vice President Mike Pence, who allegedly won him over after he gave a “vicious and extended monologue” about the Clintons at a summer breakfast event.
The Trump campaign disputed the account of events to the Washington Post.
“This is not true and there was never any such poll,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said.
Gates’s book, Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost, recounts his time on the campaign in a positive light, unlike several others who worked alongside Trump in the White House who have written tell-all books disparaging the president.
Gates also said he supports Trump’s reelection bid, citing him as a good president.
In 2018, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and lying to federal investigators related to lobbying work he and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort did in Ukraine prior to joining the Trump campaign.
Gates’s book will be released on Oct. 13.
