'Make them dance': Inside 'Dark Lord' Trump's V.P. pageant of mean girls and wingnuts

Imagine a beauty pageant where the judge is a “Dark Lord” and the contestants include a Qanon-following Mean Girl, a killer, some wing nuts and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

This is how New York Times columnist Pamela Paul fears former President Donald Trump will be choosing his running mate in the 2024 presidential race, she wrote Thursday.

“The pageant has already begun,” writes Paul. “Whoever Donald Trump chooses as his running mate, please let it not be a woman.”

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Paul takes a hard look at the many possible female contenders lining up to join Trump on his controversial ticket.

The Times columnist envisions an open audition for “The Apprentice” and reminds readers of what Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella recently told the Guardian.

“He will make them dance,” Bardella said. “They will all debase themselves and humiliate themselves and jockey for that spot.”

Paul does not object to a woman on the ticket, just the women she sees jockeying for the spot.

They include “killer” Rep. Elise Stefanik, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and less likely options that include “wing nut devotees Kari Lake of Arizona and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene,” of Georgia.

“All of them are the kinds of women Trump ostensibly likes, in large part because they play into the demeaning gendered stereotypes Trump basks in,” writes Paul. “Whether it’s the steely, stilettoed vixen or the no-nonsense broad.”

Noem and Lake may look the part, “which has always been top of mind to Trump” but its hard to discount the Georgia Republican, Paul writes.

“Mean Girl” Greene, Paul writes, is best described as “a QAnon fantasist whose relationship to the truth rivals that of the election lawyer turned criminal Sidney Powell.

“These are all distasteful stereotypes,” Paul writes, “but they are ones these women seem more than willing to embrace in the name of their Dark Lord.”

Paul concludes by combatting any perceived notions of feminism on Trump’s part.