After receiving critical support, can the vice president unite a fracturing base?
Once Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Vice President JD Vance figured to be the default frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028. That is usually the case when a president is set to leave office, and his understudy runs to succeed him, but the VP almost certainly did not expect to be all but anointed three years before the next election.
At a juncture where increasingly ugly divisions are starting to rear their head in MAGA world, Vance hopes to stand as a unifying force. And assuming he does indeed aspire to the presidency, the VP must now be thrilled at receiving not one but two major endorsements before 2025 is even over.
JD Vance Now in the Driver’s Seat
The first came at the Turning Point USA AmericaFest over the weekend in Phoenix, where Erika Kirk, widow of the slain leader of TPUSA and new head of the organization, offered a full-throated institutional endorsement of Vance to become the 48th president of the United States. Receiving the nod, especially this early, from the fast-rising group whose membership has exploded since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, is a proud feather in Vance’s cap. After all, the late founder of TPUSA was credited with getting millions of young voters to turn out for Trump, a pivotal factor in the 2024 election, so having the organization completely on board with his presumed candidacy is a major development.
But, you might ask, what about Marco Rubio? Trump’s Secretary of State and National Security Advisor has been considered in most circles a co-frontrunner with Vance for 2028, 1B to the VP’s 1A. Rubio already ran unsuccessfully against Trump in 2016, but “Little Marco,” as Trump called him, has turned into Big Marco, the central figure in Trump’s foreign policy and international relations. At just 54 years old, surely his ambition for the highest office in the land has not diminished, right? Well, it’s complicated.
While Rubio may ultimately seek the big prize again in the 2030s, he has now reportedly told confidants that JD Vance, whom he calls a close friend, is the frontrunner for the 2028 Republican nomination and that he’d support the vice president if he chose to run. That is just as, if not more, significant than the TPUSA endorsement.
MAGA Fractures
Meanwhile, as Vance starts to hit his stride, MAGA world has begun to show cracks. Things exploded in the wake of Tucker Carlson’s white-glove interview in October with extremist antisemite Nick Fuentes and the subsequent reaction from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts defending Carlson. Then came the Jeffrey Epstein affair, which exposed further divisions in the coalition. It all burst into the open at AmericaFest. Famed conservative commentator Ben Shapiro went after Carlson for hosting Fuentes — whom he called “a Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse” — on his podcast. “The conservative movement is in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.” Shapiro referred to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon as “a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein.”
A pair of famously mercurial – many have said unstable – characters, Carlson and Bannon, were brought on stage and returned the favor, dishing out vitriol against Shapiro. “To hear calls for deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event — I’m like, what?” Carlson later responded with his signature contemptuous laugh. “This is hilarious.” It was a festival of grievances, free speech on steroids, and it did nothing to advance the conservative cause except for forcing the attendees to take sides.
Many on the right believe Bannon has gone off the deep end, and his guarantee of a third Trump term seems to confirm their suspicions. “Trump is going to be president in ‘28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” Bannon told The Economist in October. “At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is.”
Excuse me, what? First of all, who is the “we” he is talking about? Bannon was banished from the first Trump administration after he reportedly leaked like a sieve, sat for an interview with American Prospect, a left-wing platform, and later wrote a book replete with stinging criticism of the Trump White House. With friends like that …
There will obviously be many twists and turns between now and Election Day 2028, but with two critical endorsements, Vice President JD Vance has clearly dashed from the starting line ahead of anyone else considering a run, seemingly without much effort. Over the next three years, Vance will surely try to solidify his support slowly but surely. And as President Trump heads off into the sunset, the VP’s chief task between now and then will be to unify a conservative base showing signs of splintering.
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