Elise Stefanik seen as top pick for Trump VP

 NBC News:

During a candlelit dinner with Mar-a-Lago members in late December, former President Donald Trump walked around the table as the conversation turned to one of the biggest decisions he’d have to make should he become the Republican nominee: Whom should he pick to be his running mate?

That’s when Rep. Elise Stefanik, the hard-charging upstate New York Republican, came up, according to a person at the dinner table. Attendees around Trump raved about her viral moment just weeks before, when she grilled three university presidents at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus.

At the thought of Stefanik as a possible choice for vice president, Trump nodded approvingly.

“She’s a killer,” Trump said, according to the person at the event.

Ever since then, Trump and a growing group of allies have started to look more closely at Stefanik as a running mate, according to eight people familiar with the matter, including people in Trump’s orbit, Stefanik fundraising bundlers and former Trump administration officials.

At the time, the 39-year-old congresswoman was at the crest of a wave of national publicity after taking on the top leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their answers to the question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your college’s] rules on bullying and harassment?” eventually resulted in two of them resigning and brought a firestorm of criticism on the schools.

But Stefanik was on Trump’s radar long before that hearing, because she possesses one of the key attributes he’s looking for in a 2024 running mate: loyalty. That, mixed with her ability to drive the news on key issues, may be an irresistible mix for a vice presidential pick.

“Stefanik is at the top,” said Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist in the White House and the architect of his 2016 campaign strategy.

“If you’re Trump, you want someone who’s loyal above all else,” a Republican campaign operative said. “Particularly because he sees Mike Pence as having made a fatal sin.”

On Wednesday, after this story was published, Stefanik announced she would be campaigning with Trump in New Hampshire.

Once a moderate Republican who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, Stefanik shifted to the right and rebranded herself as one of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill after he won the White House in 2016.
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I was impressed with Stefanik long before she grilled the university presidents.  She appears to have the talent to be extremely good at the job.  She is smart and she has demonstrated the skills to deliver at a high level.