CHARLESTON, S.C.—Just one day before South Carolina’s Feb. 24 Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump, Jr. spoke to Trump supporters at the Citadel, South Carolina’s public senior military college, and the Trump campaign’s state HQ.
He fielded questions on a range of topics, including who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline.
Mr. Trump, Jr. said that the United States’ leading role was “most plausible.”
The question of who blew up the pipelines sending Russian energy to Europe has remained controversial. While Western reporting at the time focused on Russia, often through appeals to unnamed intelligence sources, others have blamed the United States.
“I don’t know that Ukraine has the sophistication to pull something like that off. So, I imagine there are three-letter agencies that were somehow involved in this, and whether it was jointly with them or on their own, I imagine that happened,” the former president’s eldest son told The Epoch Times.
Republican Candidate Nikki Haley
Closer to home was the topic of South Carolina’s former governor, Nikki Haley. Ms. Haley, who remains President Trump’s chief Republican rival in the race, has continued to raise money from Never Trump Republicans even as others in the party seek to consolidate around President Trump as the presumptive nominee.One force in the background is “No Labels,” a national organization that has sought to run what it considers centrist candidates.
“My focus is running in a Republican primary. It always has been. I have never talked to the ‘No Labels’ people, that’s not anything I’m focused on,” she said.
Mr. Trump, Jr. dismissed that reassurance from Ms. Haley.
“I don’t know that I believe anything that Nikki Haley says at this point. She said she wasn’t gonna run, right?” he told The Epoch Times.
Talks Trump VP Pick
Mr. Trump, Jr. also weighed in on possible running mates for his father, who recently discussed a few candidates with Laura Ingraham on her Fox News town hall.“There‘d be a couple that I’d love to see, if only just for like the vice presidential debate, right?... Like a Tucker Carlson go[ing] up against Kamala Harris,” he said.
“Tim’s a great guy,” he added.
“I think my father mentioned some of those as potentials. And there’s probably a couple that he didn’t mention that are potentials,” he continued.
He also suggested he had helped undermine any talk of Ms. Haley as a potential VP pick weeks and weeks ago.
“I was the first one to be very vocal, maybe the first one in the Trump campaign to be, like, very vocal about not wanting Nikki Haley,” he said.
While some have floated Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as a vice presidential candidate, Mr. Trump, Jr. named him as a possible replacement for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
