He said there could be “four or five” people under consideration and likened the selection process to a “highly sophisticated version of The Apprentice,” the TV reality show where contestants competed for a job at his company and helped turn Trump into a household name.
The decision will come at a moment of tumult for Democrats following 81-year-old President Joe Biden’s faltering debate performance on June 27.
A growing number of Democratic lawmakers have called for Biden to step down for a younger nominee, though Biden has insisted he plans to stay in the race.
Trump’s rally on Saturday evening at the Butler Farm Show Grounds in Pennsylvania underscores the importance of the state, which Trump won in 2016 but lost to Biden in 2020.
It is again one of the handful of states likely to determine the outcome of the presidential election in November, and both men are targeting the state with visits and campaign resources.
On Sunday, Biden visited a Black church in Philadelphia and held an event with union members in Harrisburg, the state capital.
Trump held a rally in Philadelphia three weeks ago, an event he billed as a chance to court Black voters.
The former president will use the rally on Saturday to talk about inflation, crime and other issues he blames on Biden, the Trump campaign said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s decision to lift restrictions on Trump is expected to give his campaign a boost.
The social media giant had initially banned the former president from using its platforms in 2021 after his supporters stormed the Capitol.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, lifted that ban last year but announced Trump would be subject to “guardrails” such as “heightened suspension penalties” if posts violated its standards.
Now, the company has removed those restrictions, reasoning that while they were put in place following the “extreme and extraordinary circumstances” of the Capitol attack, Trump had not done anything to run afoul of them.
“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for president on the same basis,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs wrote in a statement posted to the company’s website on Friday.
Clegg added that both Biden and Trump are still subject to the same “community standards” that apply to all other users of the company’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook, the world’s largest social media site, had been both a publicity tool and a crucial place to tap donations from supporters for both of Trump’s previous campaigns.
These days, however, he has been posting frequently on his own Truth Social site, which he launched after Facebook and others suspended him.
