Originally Posted: July 15, 2016
Pence safe but “lacking sizzle” — says Matthew Wilson, an SMU associate professor of Political Science.
A series of Thursday leaks that Donald Trump would name Indiana Gov. Mike Pence his running mate and an announced 11 a.m. introductory news conference was derailed overnight by a terrorist attack in Nice, France, eventually leading Donald Trump to formally announcing his vice presidential pick with a 9:50 a.m. tweet.
“It was an unfortunate confluence of events, with the deadline for Pence to withdraw from the governor’s race today that forced their hand,” Wilson says. “It would have been unseemly to do a big kickoff event with the attack in the background, but if Pence dropped out of the governor’s race, that would have served as an announcement as well. The Twitter announcement is a bit odd. They could have made a subdued statement letting people know Pence is the running mate, but they’ll defer a bigger event until later in respect for the people killed in Nice, but it turns out Trump loves Twitter, so he went ahead and did that.” READ MORE