Donald Trump has named U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, but a former senator thinks he's far from the "unifying" force that the ex-president called for after his near-death experience this weekend.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) denounced political violence, but said that Trump's experience and post-assassination response made it seem as if he was ready to unify the country.
Choosing Vance, she said, is the "opposite" of that.
"If this was going to be a moment where Donald Trump, because he was — he came so close to a brush with death that he was going to somehow pivot to a softer, more unifying message, that it seems to me, he would have reached out to one of the many candidates for vice president that would have done what Katy [Tur] referred to, and that is open the tent flap a little. Let a few more people in. Soften the edges," she said.
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She called Vance a "flame thrower, who is bombastic" and has a long history of attacking Trump with some of the strongest language of anyone in the Republican Party.
Instead, Trump "has closed the flap, and they have now stitched it closed because they are not reaching out to a new group of people, and I think it's fascinating, to me, that he wanted someone more in his image, willing to say things which I think was an irresponsible thing for J.D. Vance to say," McCaskill continued.
It isn't "what the country needs right now," she said.
Instead, her suggestion was for someone who could quiet things down and have policy discussions rather than encourage further violence and rage.
"So, I am not optimistic that we're going to see a pivot from Trump to a more unifying message because if he was, he wouldn't have picked him. He wouldn't have picked J.D. Vance," she closed.
Former Republican congressman from Florida David Jolly said that issues aside, Vance is woefully unqualified to be a president of the United States.
"He is unqualified to be president of the United States tomorrow, and where I think a conventional candidate, as Claire said, coming out of the events in Butler, Pennsylvania, would have selected somebody that could be president tomorrow," Jolly explained.
See their full conversation below or at the link here.