By Theodore Schleifer
(CNN) Donald Trump, leading his press pack on a tour of his golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, on Saturday said that he’s getting “a lot of calls” from people interested in being his running mate.
He also assured reporters that many qualified people were interested in the job, despite several prominent Republicans taking pains to note that they weren’t interested.
“I will tell you one thing, I’m getting calls from a lot of people and they want it,” Trump told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “The only people who say they don’t want it are the people that were never asked, OK.”
Trump has said he will announce his pick at the Republican National Convention next month, but his campaign team has long said it will choose someone with extensive Washington experience to team up with the billionaire.
Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said on CNN this week that there were “no more than four” names on the short-list. And he reaffirmed that people do want the job.
“There’s been some speculation out there that people don’t want to be part of this — it’s absolutely the opposite,” Lewandowski told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront.”
A CNN/ORC poll released Wednesday found that just a handful of Republican voters want their presumptive nominee to choose someone just like him. Only 8% say they’d like to see Trump select someone with a background in the business world, while the rest are divided between a running mate with experience in the military (47% would prefer that) or in politics (43% prefer a politician).
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