My money for Trump's eventual defamatory nickname of Vivek is on "ramma-lamma-dingdong"
Vivek absolutely approaches this entire debacle with a strategy of "look how little Mike Pence did and he rode it out. I will do only slightly more and make a lotttttttt of money". Vivek is slime. Intentionally inflammatory and knowingly false statements for press coverage. It's like 2015 and 2016 all over again. The media is obviously incapable of not seeking profit at the expense of truth and democracy. He won't be on the GOP ballot, though. VP or otherwise. There is nothing he can say to purchase whiteness.
Y'know. 'cuz it's an amusing but topical digression. One of the things that Palo Alto book focuses on is the early history of racism and eugenics in California (thanks, Leland Stanford). And while there was a lot lot of racism against the Chinese, there was also a lot of racism in favor of more-established minorities against less-established minorities. 'member Bobby Jindal? He was enough of a guiding light in the Republican Party that they had him do the response to Obama's first State of the Union. How 'bout Nikki Haley? Desi as hell but she won't rub your nose in it. Dinesh D'Souza? Mumbai, baby. And what do they hate Kamala Harris for? They hate her for being black, not because her mom is from Chennai. Do Indians get killed in hate crimes? Yes. By mistake. Them California Republicans? They totally came down on the side of South Asians against the Chinese. I think for purposes of exclusion from the master race, "India" is considered white-adjacent in ways Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else are not.
I think that's generally correct, but "white-adjacent" just isn't enough these days. And you know that Trump bristles even thinking about the phrase "Trump-Ramaswamy 2024". I also suspect he has enough political instinct to choose a woman for VP. Nikki Haley can pull the race card when needed, but is also granted whiteness because of her appearance and (changed) name. But it's still hella stupid that she claimed in her first campaign ad that racism is no longer a problem in America. Which was a few mass-shooting racist manifestos ago. Meanwhile, meatball Ron is using a hurricane to get off the campaign trail for a respite. The only folks stupider than all of this are the insufferable tankies on twitter trying to get people to vote Cornell West or Marianne Williamson. I think I hate them more than the MAGAts.