How daunting it must be for the Trump campaign to search for and vet a compatible running mate for The Donald.
Here’s a questionnaire that could help them find a vice-presidential candidate who shares Trump’s principles.
The list consists of 25 questions, or 35 questions if you employ Trump math:
1. Have you ever hired undocumented immigrants, for example as demolition workers?
2. Have you ever met with the head of a Mafia crime family, for example Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno?
3. Have your ever financed multimillion-dollar apartments for the lady friend of a mob-connected union boss?
4. Have you ever engaged in discriminatory housing practices?
5. Have you ever made fraudulent claims in connection with a bogus university bearing your name?
6. Have you ever partnered with a convicted violent felon who has a history of stock fraud and connections to Russian organized crime?
7. Have you ever pocketed millions via supposed charitable giving?
8. Have you ever taken the Fifth Amendment more than 90 times when testifying under oath?
9. Have you ever pressed authorities to ban disabled veterans from selling hats and scarves on your street even though they are entitled to do so under a law dating back to the aftermath of the Civil War?
10. Have you ever built a tower and exaggerated its height by 10 stories by having the buttons in the elevators skip 10 buttons?
20. Have you commented on your daughter’s body in sexual terms?
21. Have your businesses repeatedly gone into bankruptcy?
22. Do you owe your continued solvency to investors from China and Saudi Arabia?
23. Have you entered into real-estate development projects with at least two convicted cocaine traffickers?
24. Have you lied about your ethnic background?
25. Have you capitalized on political connections to secure unprecedented tax breaks?
26. Have you sold numerous products manufactured in China?
27. Have you lied about losing “hundreds of friends” on 9/11?
28. Did you once disparage President Reagan in the same terms that you now use to disparage President Obama?
29. Do you have a history of misogynistic remarks, including calling a woman who gave $1 million to the victims of the 9/11 attacks the day after the attacks a “fat pig” while you gave nothing yourself?
30. Have you urged people to punch others in the face and then denied urging people to punch others in the face?
31. Have you lent your name to projects and then falsely intimated to investors that you are actually involved in the construction?
32. Do you dismiss as “dishonest” anybody who challenges you with actual facts?
33. Have you called reporters while posing as somebody else and passed on false information about yourself?
34. Have you then denounced that information as lies?
35. Do you sometimes mock the handicapped?
What’s not clear is whether the Trump campaign is looking for a running mate for whom the truthful response to such queries would be “no.”
The greater share of voters in the Republican primaries have already shown that they prefer a candidate for whom the truthful answer to all of these questions would be “yes.”