Vice President JD Vance is already locking up the 2028 Republican presidential nomination—and we’re still nearly three years out.
According to NBC News, early polls show Vance with a commanding lead. He’s already secured the endorsement of Turning Point USA’s Erika Kirk, and both Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have essentially anointed him as the heir to the MAGA throne.
The latest genuflection came Sunday when outgoing Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin told Fox News, “I agree with President Trump, I agree with Marco Rubio. I think Vice President Vance would be a great nominee.” Rubio himself has been even more deferential, repeatedly insisting the nomination is Vance’s “for the taking.”
BUT BUT BUT: That hasn’t stopped a handful of ambitious Republicans from making moves that sure look like they’re testing the waters.
Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Rand Paul—along with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—have all staked out positions that conveniently put daylight between themselves and the Vice President. The White House is not amused.
It’s also unclear if the aging Donald Trump will ever give up power.
THE DETAILS: Cruz has been the most brazen. He’s clashed with the administration over NASA nominations, picked fights about FCC overreach, and—perhaps most pointedly—warned about rising antisemitism in the GOP while specifically citing interviews conducted by Vance ally Tucker Carlson with white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Cruz recently held a “friendraiser” in Miami with Florida political heavyweights.
Hawley and Paul have drawn Trump’s direct ire. Both received “angry” calls from the president last week after voting to rebuke his use of force in Venezuela.
Paul—who voted against Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” and forced Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote—was called a “stone cold loser” by Trump in a Detroit speech Tuesday. Paul has also attacked Vance directly, calling his support for extrajudicial killings of alleged cartel members “despicable and thoughtless.”
DeSantis, still licking wounds from his failed 2024 primary challenge against Trump, appears to be playing a longer game. He’s been notably quiet on issues like Netanyahu’s Mar-a-Lago visit—odd for someone who built his brand on Zionist advocacy.
“That tells you he has a pulse on where a portion of the party is,” a former adviser told NBC. “He has always been good at not only reading where the party is today, but where it is going.”
OF COURSE, the White House is dismissing all of this as premature posturing. “Broadly speaking, it’s just silly and early,” a person close to Vance told NBC. “A lot of it seems to be driven by interest in getting media attention, much more so than paying attention to the task in front of them now.”
A veteran Trump strategist was blunter: “The anti-Vance lane is mostly party elites hunting for defectors and pretending that’s a coalition. That didn’t work with Trump vs. DeSantis, and it won’t work here either unless Vance hands them the opening himself.”
WHY IT MATTERS: This is the Republican Party deciding right now whether MAGA is a movement or a monarchy. Vance represents direct succession—Trump’s chosen heir, backed by the party’s biggest megaphone in Turning Point USA and its donor class.
The would-be challengers are betting that Trump fatigue will eventually set in, or that there’s an opening for someone willing to push back on issues like AI regulation, foreign intervention, or antisemitism.
Whether any of them actually have the spine to mount a real challenge—or whether this is all just positioning for Cabinet posts in a Vance administration—remains to be seen. But the jockeying has clearly begun, and the knives are out three years early.