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Q: Why doesn't Trump swap out Vance for one of his sons?
It seems like endowing anyone outside the family with VP levels of power is going to screw Trump in the long term. Pence continues to say Trump's unfit for democratic office as do many of his previous associates. Vance has previous form of the same hate reaction that many Dems find themselves having in response to Trump, and may revert to that once it's no longer advantageous to support Trump. So he adds distrust to the ticket.
Plus, Vance currently is an obvious drag on Trump because he doesn't have the ability to constantly shift and twirl that Trump does. People said upon Vance's pick that he would provide a kind of ideological scaffolding for Trumpism but that concept is absurd, because it implies creating a system that makes explicit and clear Trump's commitments – what he'll stick to and what he'll abandon when necessary. That making-explicit will by its nature damage Trump because it restricts his freedom of movement and ability to retroactively choose which things that come out of his mouth are literal, which are serious but not literal, and which are simply jokes. Without that freedom to dodge, the gymnastic elephant that is Trump would eventually be brought down for good.
Choosing one of the sons would communicate clearly to people that there is a VP on the ticket who owes his very existence not just his power to Trump and cannot, will not differ from him. It would help bolster the idea that voters are choosing Trump, a man they feel they have an emotional, animal connection with, rather than a party or set of policies, and that the number two on the ticket is as in thrall to Donald Trump Senior as they are themselves.
True, it would create doubt over the succession plan if something happens to Trump while in office, but tbh with Trump on the ticket that is always the case because he is just not readily replaceable.
Several overlapping reasons. Any or all of which may be true, or which may not be true but Trump may believe them to be true.
The Capability Problem: Edward Luttwak, the schizo academic gadfly, tweeted out the other week something along the lines of how it's telling that despite Trump having two grown adult sons, they are such obvious incompetents that the world of Trump fanfiction is built around Baron, who is just a tall and handsome but silent and autistic child. Don Jr. and Eric might just not have what it takes, or Don Sr. might not believe they have it. The Biden stuff recently has taught us a lesson" sometimes when a political campaign doesn't do something, it indicates that they can't do it, a lack of capability rather than a lack of strategy or motivation.
The Succession Problem: The Trump organization is, whatever the #resistance truthers tell you, a big and complicated and important company. While Trump has pushed the boundaries of presidential involvement in the family business, he just doesn't have the time to run it day to day. Taking a son into the VP slot, where as frequently noted he would have little actual responsibility anyway, means taking a son out of the business. This reduces family control over the business, which I suspect is of at least equal importance to Trump as winning the presidency and exercising political power. When you move guys to new positions to fill holes, it messes up the depth chart elsewhere, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. And particularly, we don't know if Don Jr. or Eric will be good VP candidates, so if you put a son in as VP and replace him in the Trump organization, you now have to worry about your VP candidate and the person you put in power at the Trump org. Where if you sign a free agent for the VP slot, you at least have certainty at the business.
The Succession Problem: I noted repeatedly during the debates over the lawfare against Trump that such efforts would be ineffective against most political candidates, because most political candidates have obvious replacements. We've seen this play out in real life with the Biden-Harris swap. Most Democrats who liked Biden are more than willing to rally around Harris, because there isn't much ideological space between them to begin with, because Biden was just sort of a generic political candidate to begin with, and because both of their views can be described as adhering to Democratic party orthodoxy. Trump, on the other hand, is 1/1 and has not made any efforts to produce a political heir. In eight years dominating the national stage, he has never groomed an obvious second. While this makes him and his political movement uniquely vulnerable to lawfare or to an assassins bullet, it also protects him from the internal party apparatus changing him out because of the lawfare or the scandals. A huge number of Trump's voters would not support another Republican candidate, any other Republican candidate. Would the same hold true for Trump II? Trump might fear getting sidelined or forced out, as Biden recently was, if he puts one of his sons into the VP slot and publicly grooms him as a successor. He's shown no evidence of desiring a successor up to this point; "apres moi, le deluge." Trump wants to be in personal control, as soon as he creates a successor he creates an alternative.
The Power Problem: Trump might not actually have the power to force one of his sons into the VP slot. IIRC, don't the party conventions vote on VP nominees? While typically they ratify the choice of the presidential nominee, the presidential nominee also makes the choice with the convention floor vote in mind. If Trump tried to force a full family takeover, he would risk inciting an insurgency in the party, or weakening his electoral case.
JD Vance Isn't That Bad: This all operates under the assumption that he should swap out JD Vance. I don't think JD Vance was a bad pick, and he will be an asset to the Trump campaign and the Trump admin over time. The best attacks against him right now are generic R stuff that any VP would get, the couch fucking meme which is funny but ultimately intellectually contradictory even if it were true and totally meaningless if it isn't, and the "hates the childless" stuff which is just a negative reframing of a lot of Democratic policies (chlidcare tax credit for example). Give him a few months before we let liberal media outlets report "rumors" that require a change in strategy.
A lot to respond to but I think the incompetence of one of the Trump sons would be part of their electoral appeal – it's a guarantee to voters that they are voting for one man and one man only (Trump) and not Trump as diluted by some institutional safe pair of hands (this was Pence) or with the added risk of some other rival iconoclast who may be divisive or detract from the focus on Trump the man (this is Vance).
The succession problem I think is a non-problem – part of Trump's pitch is that he is the most vigorous and basically indomitable candidate America has ever seen, so no one has to worry about anything happening to him in the next five years. It won't, and I think the mindset Trump supporters should be in, if the campaign is run as I think it should be, is that a post-Trump world is unimaginable and not something they need to trouble themselves about.
... I'm a little lost here. You think Trump will be stronger running as a dictator who will abolish democracy? Or am I misreading you.
Not to actually abolish democracy necessarily, but to use the trappings of a king to dominate in a democracy. For example, he can make it socially forbidden within his movement to think about who or what comes after him, and damn as disloyal anyone who brings up the question of the post-Trump world as a topic. I actually think he pursues this strategy instinctively already, for example with his comments about Christians not needing to vote again after this election. Whether he actually goes on to abolish democracy is a different question, but keeping the possibility he might in play seems to work well with a section of the electorate.
Ah see I think Trump's hold on Republicans is pretty tenuous, sort of like owning a narrow majority of a holding company that owns a narrow majority of a conglomerate that owns the GOP. He's very vulnerable to the fact that he has no real 1:1 allies in his party. The prosecutions would be a suicide mission if he had a political heir.
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This is totally offtopic, but is Barron Trump really autistic?
Sure, he always looks like he is in another dimension, but I found this very short video where he is greeting someone and he sounds totally normal and his smile doesn't look like an autist:
https://x.com/Pickuptruckdude/status/1788378062679114097
I think he is just reserved. Do we have other videos of him talking?
He's 18.
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