"...presumptive GOP presidential nominee and foaming man-possum Donald Trump..."

[Miles Archer]

Donald Trump’s Vice Presidential Picking Process Sounds Dodgy As Hell

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-vice-president-pick_us_57586a02e4b0e39a28ac494b

If you’re like, say, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) — who’s given presumptive GOP presidential nominee and foaming man-possum Donald Trump three weeks to “fix” his campaign — you might be nervously watching for signs that Trump is undertaking an effort to bring order to an organization that has lately lapsed into chaos. Giving a speech with a teleprompter in which the overt white-supremacist content was dialed back a notch might have been a good start.

But then you read the interview that Trump just gave Bloomberg News and ... wow. I don’t know, you guys. Go read the whole thing — it’s a genuine doozy.

As Bloomberg’s Michael Bender and Jennifer Jacobs report, there is much that seems off, perhaps even delusional, about how Trump sees the next part of his electoral strategy playing out. He seems not to understand how expensive an undertaking this race is going to be (or he’s realizing that donors don’t want to be associated with him), and he believes that living off the land of free media is sufficient to the task. Speaking of all that free media, he also seems to think that the issues that have dogged him over the past week — Trump University and his disparagement of Judge Gonzalo Curiel — are now effectively in the rear-view mirror.

What might be most alarming to veteran GOP figures is how Trump details his process for choosing a running mate. Bender and Jacobs report that Trump has narrowed his search to four or five politicians, plus two “respected military officials.” Of the latter two, Trump says that he probably won’t choose them because he believes he will “do very well on national security.” (For a counterpoint, see Ian Bremmer in Politico.)

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. LOL ... No ...

Hold up now, let me get this straight: He’s going to wait until the convention to make his pick, and it could end up being someone who has not offered Trump an endorsement but who Trump thinks will join up with him anyway? Ordinarily I’d say, “Well, surely he wouldn’t actually fail to apprise the selectee of his decision, and nail down whether they’d actually accept the position.” But Trump is so enamored of wielding the element of surprise, and so steeped in reality-television tropes, that I can genuinely imagine him springing it on some poor sucker, right there on the convention stage.

You can see it, right? There’s an audible gasp, the camera cuts to a shocked Marco Rubio, and some previously unseen emcee asks, “Will Marco accept Trump’s nomination? Find out after the break.” And then after the break, there are several more breaks, after which Rubio finally renders his decision. “Donald, we’ll try to make it work,” he says, whereupon a torrent of balloons gently waft down from the rafters as Rubio’s soul exits his body in the other direction.

That's The Bachelor, the reality show the writer is looking for is the "Miss Universe Pageant" ... where the cameras pan in on the selectee's face to catch to shock and, when that fades, appreciation.