Dan Quayle on Donald Trump: ‘I'm Going to Support the Nominee’
— -- Former Vice President Dan Quayle is backing fellow Republican Donald Trump for president and believes that Trump could beat Hillary Clinton in November and put Republicans back in the White House.
“I'm going to support the nominee,” Quayle said in an interview on the “Today Show” this morning. “And I predict that most people in my position or people that have been in the Republican Party for a long time will rally around the nominee.”
Quayle, 69, also said he “fully expects” that House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is meeting with Trump today, will support Trump.
“I hope that happens, because we do have to be unified,” Quayle said. “If we're not unified, then we have a real lot of trouble at stake.”
The former vice president to George H. W. Bush said he believed Trump could win the White House. Bush 41 has no plans to endorse Trump, the first time in the past five elections that he has not endorsed the GOP nominee.
“Clearly, he's got good political instincts, he has a good business background, he's a winner and he's unusual,” Quayle said of Trump. “He’s obviously very different. He’s not going to play by the rules … but I think that he can win.”
But he also said he wanted to see Trump “more involved” in policy matters.
“He's got to make another speech on foreign policy. He's got to make speeches on the economy. He's got to show that he's presidential. He's not running in a primary anymore. He's won that. Now he's got to figure out how to win the general election,” Quayle said.
Of Trump’s likely Democratic challenger, Quayle said Hillary Clinton is more qualified to be president “on paper,” but argued that Trump is “more qualified in the sense that the American people, I think, want an outsider.”
Quayle, who also represented Indiana as U.S congressman and senator, declined to say whether he thinks Trump should release his tax returns, but did offer the presumptive GOP one piece of advice: Pick Ohio Sen. Rob Portman as his running mate.
“Man of substance, great guy,” Quayle said of Portman.
