Trump not considering former rival Nikki Haley for vice president

Donald Trump indicated that he is not considering his former Republican rival Nikki Haley for vice president.

The 77-year-old real estate tycoon, who hopes to return to the White House, has everyone guessing about whom he will pick as his running mate in the November vote.

Senators Tim Scott and J.D. Vance and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik have been named as the most likely candidates.

"Nikki Haley is not under consideration for the V.P. slot, but I wish her well!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.

Haley was Trump's last rival in the Republican primaries.

The 52-year-old has yet to endorse the man who, during the final months of the primary campaign, referred to her as "birdbrain."

But the former South Carolina governor is popular with moderate and independent voters who President Joe Biden is keen to wrest from the Republicans and who Trump would do well to court.

AFP reached out to the Trump team earlier this week for a hint on the kind of person who might turn the candidate's head.

A campaign aide demurred.

"Anyone claiming to know who or when President Trump will choose (as) his VP is lying, unless the person is named Donald J.

Trump faces legal woes amid strong support

After a long week in court, Donald Trump is heading to the Jersey Shore. And he's being greeted by thousands of his supporters.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, expects to draw what his team is calling a “mega crowd” to a Saturday evening rally in the southern New Jersey resort town of Wildwood.

The beachfront gathering was designed to serve as a show of force at a critical moment for Trump, a presidential candidate known for drawing huge crowds.

Hours before Trump was scheduled to take the stage, thousands of loyalists donning Trump's “Make America Great Again” hats and t-shirts gathered on the sand between the boardwalk and carnival rides to greet the former Republican president.

“The everyday American people are 100% behind him," said Doreen O'Neill, a 62-year-old nurse from Philadelphia.

“They have to cheat and smear him and humiliate him in that courtroom every single day” O'Neill said. “This country is going to go insane if they steal the election again.”

Trump's gathering in deep-blue New Jersey comes less than six months before Election Day.

The former president's extraordinary legal woes, which include three other unrelated criminal cases, have emerged as a central issue in the campaign.

Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration and Democratic officials in New York of using the legal system to block his return to the White House. Prosecutors allege the former president broke the law to conceal an affair with an adult movie actress that would have hurt his first presidential bid.

And while Trump will almost certainly seize on his legal woes Saturday, a judge's gag order — and the threat of jail — will limit Trump's ability to comment publicly on witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the New York trial, which is expected to consume much of the month. The judge in the case already has fined Trump $9,000 for violating th e order and warned that jail could follow if he doesn’t comply.