$100 Million Dollars Is A Lot Of Temptation
First the good news: a poll released yesterday by Florida’s Chamber of Commerce shows that 61% of voters support Amendment 4, in effect to put abortion rights in the state constitution. 60% is the magic number and inly 29% of respondents said they opposed the amendment.
Now, moving along to the not such good news… I mean we’re talking about Florida here. More than a million Florida Democrats have been “deregistered” in the past three years. These are not Democrats who have switched to Republican or independent, these are Democrats who have been removed from the active voter list. (Also, everyone’s existing mail ballot request has been deleted by the Republican Legislature.) Florida Republicans also have thwarted the registration of 1.5 million convicted felons, despite a blow-out vote on a constitutional amendment in favor of this. According to the Florida Democratic Party’s 2024 budget, the party intends to spend $300,000 registering Democrats— in Miami, only. (It says that it is willing to spend another $200,000, if it can raise it.) Based on what it actually costs to register voters, $15 million would be a reasonable amount, not $300,000. Unfortunately, it looks like the party is acquiescing in one of the largest voter suppression schemes in history. Obama’s operation registered a million voters in Florida in 2008 and then managed to beat McCain 4,282,074 to 4,045,624 (a margin of 236,450 votes).
Like many of us, I misunderstood the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, thinking it would prevent Trump, a resident of Florida, from selecting a running mate from the same state. But a constitutional scholar pal of mine pointed out that the amendment only says that the electors of that state (Florida’s 30 in this case) would not be able to vote for both Trump and a Floridian running mate. Something like that happened in 2000 when Bush picked Cheney, who, as CEO of Haliburton, was living in Dallas. They got around that by Cheney, just before the election, re-registering to vote in Wyoming, where he had a home, and getting a driver’s license there as well. Three Texas voters challenged the results of the electoral college count based on the 12th Amendment. A lower federal court ruled against them and then the Appeals Court dismissed the case.
Where could Marco Rubio or Rick Scott, each avidly trying to persuade Trump that they’re the right choice, claim they were residents of? Rubio, basically a Cuban anchor baby, was born in Miami and lived in Florida his whole life except for one unfortunate year of college in Arkansas before dropping out and moving back to Miami to pursue a career as a gay prostitute. On the other hand, Scott, who never met whomever his father may have been, was born in Bloomington, Illinois and was raised in North Kansas City, Missouri, where he went to college. He went to law degree at a Bible college in Texas, which is where he was licensed to practice law. He moved to Florida as part of a scam to take over the Hospital Corporation of America and commit the biggest fraud against Medicare in history. He got very rich in the process, rich enough to be a gubernatorial election and then a Senate selection. Now he wants to buy VP election. We’ll come back to that in a moment.
Yesterday, the Daily Beast reported that Rubio is working Mar-a-Lago like there’s no tomorrow. Last weekend he was at the Trumpanzee donor retreat, “working the room, according to a donor and attendee, pressing the flesh and quietly setting the stage for a major promotion. ‘He was very aggressive. He was out there, working the room. He had his family with him, which was a staple of his failed 2016 campaign. But people were positive about Marco, there was buzz, and he did pretty well.’ Gone are the days of ‘Little Marco,’ as Trump used to call him— most infamously in an exchange about the two men’s relative penis sizes. Eight years later, part of Rubio’s appeal on the ticket would be his perceived distance from Trumpworld.”
“He checks quite a few boxes. I think it goes far beyond just the Latino vote,” Brad Coker, a veteran Florida pollster, told the Daily Beast. “What would set him apart from J.D. Vance and some of the others is that he’s not seen as some sort of Trump acolyte.”
A former Rubio adviser said the buzz around their former boss is no surprise.
“He’s extremely well-vetted, both by the Romney team in 2012 where they found nothing and then by the national press corps in 2016,” the Rubio alumnus said. “He’s never gonna embarrass the nominee. He doesn’t make gaffes, he’s a super-good communicator.
Trumpworld sources who spoke to the Daily Beast said Rubio has finagled his way into the top tier of the former president’s potential running mates, joining the likes of Vance, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)— though a Trumpworld source cautioned against any rankings “because it’s all filtered through people who have a reason to pump up someone’s status.”
…Rubio still has his ideological detractors who hold a grudge over his challenge to Trump in 2016. “Rubio is the inception of the Never Trump movement,” a GOP source familiar with the discussions told The Daily Beast. “If Donald Trump wants to be convicted and removed by Senate Republicans, he will select Rubio, who McConnell would be glad to appoint as the president.”
…Although he is considered well-liked in Trumpworld and may be generating the most VP buzz along with [Tim] Scott, there’s still no guarantee anyone in that cohort will get the nod.
“I would not be shocked,” the Trumpworld source said, “if we woke up one day and Trump selects a VP no one has been talking about.”
Funny no one mentioned the other Florida senator, the super-rich one, who has a history of buying offices for himself.
Yesterday the Tampa Bay Times’ Kirby Wilson noted that it was Rick Scott, rather than any family members, with Trump in court Thursday. Scott rushed to Fox & Friends afterwards to put out a very MAGA message: “I support Donald Trump. This is just political persecution. If we don’t stop this, they can go after you. Every American’s at risk. I’m going to go support this president because this is wrong, what’s happening to this guy.”
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Scott likened Trump’s trial to his own legal ordeal with the federal government. In the 1990s, Scott left Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the hospital company he led at the time, amid federal allegations of fraud in the company. The firm eventually pleaded guilty to 14 felonies, but Scott has maintained his innocence for years [having plead the 5th Amendment 75 times at the trial].
On Thursday, Scott said his company was persecuted by the Department of Justice because he pushed back on health care reforms being pushed by then-first lady Hillary Clinton.
“I saw this. It happened to me,” Scott said. “I fought HillaryCare, and guess what happened when I fought HillaryCare? (The Department of Justice) came after me, attacked me and my company.”
On Twitter, Florida Democratic Party chairperson Nikki Fried said she agreed with the comparison between Scott and Trump— in at least one sense.
“We agree, they are both fraudsters and criminals,” Fried wrote.
…In remarks to reporters outside the courtroom, Scott harshly criticized the trial of the former president. He called the prosecution politically motivated, arguing that those involved are supporters of President Joe Biden who are trying to harm Trump’s chances in the 2024 election.
“This is just a bunch of Democrats saying, ‘We want to make sure that Donald Trump can’t talk,’” Scott said. “They’ve got a gag order so he can’t go campaign. They’ve got him holed up in a courtroom, so Joe Biden can go campaign, but Donald Trump can’t. This has to stop.”
Alan Grayson, the progressive Democrat running for the Senate seat Scott is sitting in also says this has to stop— but he’s talking about something else. “Rick Scott,” he told me last night, “bought the Governor’s Mansion for around $50 million. He bought a seat in the Senate for around $75 million. So why is he meeting with Trump at Trump’s criminal trial? Is it to buy the Vice Presidency, from a corrupt fool, for around $100 million? The same fool who just offered speaking slots at the GOP convention for $1 million, and catastrophic global warming to the oil and gas industry for $1 billion? Trump would sell his soul, if he had one. Of course Trump would be willing to sell the Vice Presidency to Rick Scott. As both of them would say, a willing buyer and a willing seller— that’s the Art of the Deal.”