Is JD Vance the 2028
Front Runner? Trump Has Questions.
President Trump appears to see the matter of his heir as
unsettled, adding a layer of tension to his relationship with Vice President JD
Vance.
By Katie Rogers and Tyler
Pager
.
- May 30, 2026
In recent conversations
with aides and allies, President Trump often interjects with a question about
his vice president: Does JD Vance have what it takes to go all the way?
He usually answers his
own question: He’s not so sure.
It is not that Mr. Trump
is abandoning Mr. Vance. He involves him in major decisions, has given him
high-profile opportunities to position himself for 2028 and trusts the
41-year-old vice president to wage partisan warfare on his behalf. In a cabinet
meeting this week, Mr. Trump compared Mr. Vance to Eliot Ness, the mob-busting
federal agent, for working to ferret out fraud in mostly Democratic controlled
states.
Mr. Trump has long
conducted running focus groups on his closest aides, and appears to enjoy
needling them and keeping them off balance as a way of asserting his dominance.
Several people in the president’s inner circle have been subject to his
quasi-public questioning of their performance and their future.
But when it comes to Mr. Vance, the
stakes are higher. As the default front-runner for the Republican nomination
and would-be inheritor of the president’s political movement, Mr. Vance’s
fortunes ride to a substantial degree on the enthusiasm of the support he gets
from Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump’s regular polling of people on whether they prefer Mr. Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio has
become one of the most closely watched early indicators of how power in the
Republican Party might pass to the next generation.
When he conducts those
polls in private, Mr. Trump often compares Mr. Vance’s performance to his own
achievements. He has told several allies that Mr. Vance has never won a tough
race without his help. (Mr. Trump’s endorsement got Mr. Vance over the finish
line in a tight race for an Ohio Senate seat.) He has brought up the number of
vacations Mr. Vance has taken as vice president. (Mr. Trump does not generally
take them.)
He has repeatedly
mentioned the vice president’s initial opposition to starting a
war with Iran and has done so in front of Mr. Vance. (“I’m more of a peace
person than you are — but I had to do it,” he has said to him.) The president
has also questioned his decision to send a Vance-led delegation to a
negotiation session in Pakistan that failed to end the war.
Mr. Trump, always keenly
attuned to the optics of the presidency, has zeroed in on moments when Mr.
Vance might not look the part. He has repeatedly brought up a moment from last
spring, when Mr. Vance fumbled Ohio State’s national football
championship trophy on the White House South Lawn. (Mr. Trump has said he is
happy it wasn’t him.)
This account of Mr.
Trump’s relationship with his vice president is based on interviews with more
than a dozen people who are directly familiar with the dynamic between the two
men. Some of them were granted anonymity to speak about Mr. Trump’s thinking.
“Vice President Vance has done a
remarkable job of helping implement the president’s America First agenda,”
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement.
“There has been no vice president in history who has been more empowered, and
that is a reflection of the strong trust and relationship between the two. Any
false media narratives from unknown and unnamed sources fabricating stories
clearly do not have any knowledge of the truth.”
Mr. Trump, who turns 80
next month, is generationally and stylistically different from Mr. Vance, a
Midwestern millennial who rose out of a hardscrabble upbringing and made that
struggle the animating force of his political brand. The president, a Queens-born
real estate developer raised in wealth, prefers to be ensconced in gilded
surroundings. When Mr. Vance is not in Washington, he enjoys taking his family
home to Cincinnati or to Camp David, the woodsy presidential retreat that Mr.
Trump has only visited once in his second term.
In meetings, Mr. Vance
frequently scrolls his phone, and he uses social media to fight with his
critics. The president frequently posts to Truth Social, but he does not spend
time replying to people online, as Mr. Vance does.
Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s
chief of staff, recently advised Mr. Vance to take a break from social media,
as have other officials in the West Wing, according to people familiar with
those interactions, because the fighting was beneath his office. (Mr. Vance
said he took a break for Lent.)
Through it all, Mr.
Vance has exhibited the one quality that Mr. Trump most prizes: loyalty. He has
put aside his reservations about the war to back the president’s handling of
the conflict and carried out the traditional No. 2 attack-dog role against Mr.
Trump’s critics, even Pope Leo XIV.
He remains a popular figure among Mr.
Trump’s MAGA base. Tony Fabrizio, a longtime pollster for Mr. Trump, said the
president chose Mr. Vance as a running mate in 2024 because he appeals to those
voters. In an interview, Mr. Fabrizio said that the president saw Mr. Vance as
“a MAGA warrior who would go out every day and fight for the things the
president wanted.”
Mr. Fabrizio added: “He
knew that, and that was exactly what he got.”
‘Who Likes JD Vance?’
Even so, Mr. Trump has
continued to needle Mr. Vance on matters of substance and style, from
criticizing his shoes to ribbing him for his tendency to interject in
conversations.
In November, the
president wondered aloud why Mr. Vance was not more subservient, like the
officials who work for President Xi Jinping of China.
“Why don’t you behave
like that?” Mr. Trump asked Mr. Vance during
a breakfast for Republican senators. “JD doesn’t behave like that! JD butts
into conversations! I want to have that for at least a couple of days. OK, JD?”
People close to the
president say that Mr. Vance is in Mr. Trump’s good graces.
“My father always brings up how JD is
a savage and annihilates the fake news, like the made-up narrative of this
story,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, said in a statement
relayed through his spokesman. “Interviews, rallies, podcasts — he shows up and
performs and that’s what my father cares about.”
Image
Mr. Vance fumbled the College Football
Playoff National Championship Trophy last spring. Credit...Eric Lee/The New
York Times
To win the 2028 nomination, Mr. Vance
must stay in good standing with Mr. Trump and reassure a Republican Party that
has been molded in the president’s image but fractured by his choices. So far,
like most vice presidents, Mr. Vance has prioritized his relationship with the
president.
Despite his misgivings
about the war with Iran, he has loyally defended Mr. Trump’s decision to start
the conflict. And he has backed another politically fraught action, the
creation of a $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of what
the administration contends is political persecution. Compounded by Mr. Trump’s
recent retribution efforts against Republican lawmakers, that fund has sent
Republicans into open revolt.
For Mr. Vance, whose
political rise rested in part on his criticism of excessive American
intervention abroad, the Iran war has left him balancing his loyalty to Mr.
Trump against the antiwar sentiments of much of his political base
As Tucker Carlson, a
close ally, recently put it, the violation of a campaign promise to
not involve the United States in conflicts overseas has put Mr. Vance in a
“tough spot.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene, like Mr.
Carlson, recommended Mr. Vance to Mr. Trump for the running mate job. Both have
since fallen out of favor with Mr. Trump. In an interview, Ms. Greene warned
that, should he run for the presidency, Mr. Vance will have trouble regaining
trust from Republicans who oppose the war.
“He is no longer in a place where he
can hang on to his former reputation,” Ms. Greene said of Mr. Vance, whom she
said she still considers an ally. “There’s nothing that can protect him
anymore.”
Image
Mr. Vance on his mobile phone during a
Rose Garden Dinner Club at the White House earlier this month. Credit...Eric Lee for The
New York Times
As Mr. Vance works to
shore up Mr. Trump’s policies, the president has pondered his vice president’s
future.
Last summer, Mr. Trump
said Mr. Vance was “most likely” to be his political heir apparent: “In all
fairness, he’s the vice president,” Mr. Trump told reporters in
August, adding that he thought Mr. Rubio could eventually be added to a
presidential ticket but that it was “too early, obviously, to talk about it.”
Since that interview, Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Rubio and has told people close
to him how impressed he is with the job Mr. Rubio is doing.
Mr. Rubio spends more time with Mr.
Trump than Mr. Vance does, as is typical of a national security adviser. Mr.
Rubio frequently travels with Mr. Trump on Air Force One, and they have bonded
over weekends in Florida. Mr. Vance, by nature of being vice president, does
not travel on the same plane as Mr. Trump.
At a dinner in the Rose
Garden earlier this month, Mr. Trump quizzed his guests about who would be the
better choice: “Who likes JD Vance?” “Who likes Marco Rubio?” He made it clear
that he was not endorsing either man.
In an interview with
Fortune in the Oval Office this month, the president was asked, again, about
who best was positioned to carry on his legacy.
“Whoever gets this is
going to be very important,” the president said. “And if you get the wrong
person: disaster.”
During that interview,
Mr. Vance was watching from the back of the room as Mr. Trump answered.
‘He came up empty’
Mr. Vance is one of
the most recognizable figures
in American politics other than Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health
and Human Services secretary. One of his advantages as vice president is that
he serves as the finance chair of the Republican National Committee, with direct access to donors.
Allies of Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance say
that the vice president is still best positioned to be Mr. Trump’s successor.
Despite widespread concern over affordability and the cost of the Iran war, Mr.
Trump remains popular with Republican voters.
According to a
Quinnipiac poll published
last week, some 73 percent of Republican voters still widely approve of the job
Mr. Trump is doing. According to a poll released by Pew in February, 75 percent
of Republican voters view Mr. Vance favorably.
They are both broadly
unpopular, however. The president’s overall approval rating has sunk to a
second-term low. According to Quinnipiac, Mr. Vance is similarly unpopular,
with 39 percent of voters approving of the job he is doing.
Recently, Mr. Vance has
faced criticism among conservatives for his support for the Iran war, and for
engaging with Mr. Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo for speaking out against the war.
Mr. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 at age 35,
advised the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics to stick to religion.
Critics have
characterized him as a political shape shifter.
Gov. Andy Beshear of
Kentucky, who is widely seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential
candidate, has repeatedly accused Mr. Vance, who was born in Middletown, Ohio,
of overstating his blue-collar roots and misrepresenting himself as a product
of Appalachia. (Though Mr. Vance’s relatives were from Appalachia, Middletown is not part of the
region.)
In an interview, Mr. Beshear accused
Mr. Vance of “governing in a way that only hurts the places he claims he was
from.”
Mr. Beshear added: “JD Vance doesn’t
have a real bone in his body. Last week he’s appointed the fraud czar, and this
week he’s defending a new $1.7 billion slush fund for the Trump administration
to give to their allies.”
Image
Mr. Vance in Pakistan for Iran peace
talks last month. Credit...Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin
Mr. Vance’s allies say
that he is doing the work that would be most helpful to Mr. Trump by traveling
the world on diplomatic missions and crisscrossing the country to bolster Mr.
Trump’s domestic agenda. They say he is not worrying about netting political
wins.
On the international
stage, Mr. Vance campaigned for a hard-right overseas ally, Viktor Orban. Mr.
Orban went on to lose his race to be re-elected prime minister of Hungary. Mr.
Trump’s advisers say he expected that outcome, but the president wanted to help
an ally who had stood by him in the years he spent as a political pariah.
A major test of Mr. Vance’s domestic
political sway came last summer, when he was asked by the White House political
operation to visit the Indiana Statehouse to encourage Republicans to vote to
redraw the state’s electoral maps. In the end, the lawmakers declined to redraw
the maps, and Mr. Trump waged a mostly successful retribution campaign to
unseat those who defied his wishes.
Local officials believe
Mr. Trump’s attacks have done long-term damage to the Republican Party and that
Mr. Vance has a perilous path ahead of him if he decides to run for the
presidency.
“He came up empty in
Indiana the same way that he came up empty in Hungary,” State Representative Ed
Clere, a nine-term Republican from southern Indiana who voted against
redistricting, said of Mr. Vance.
Mr. Clere, who said he
will run for mayor of New Albany, Ind., as an independent when his term ends,
added that the vice president’s involvement in the redistricting fight “should
be a wake-up call for anyone who thinks Trump will be able to pass the MAGA
torch to Vance, or anyone else.”
James Blair, one of Mr.
Trump’s top political advisers, said that Mr. Vance was willing to try to
persuade Indiana Republicans even if it meant coming away with nothing.
“The vice president was willing to
take on the fight in Indiana because he’s not afraid to do what needs doing,
even if it’s an uphill battle,” he said in a statement. “The vice president
takes on some of the toughest tasks and keeps at it until the job is done.”
Image
Mr. Vance at an event about fraud in
Bangor, Maine, earlier this month. Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
As part of his
anti-fraud work, Mr. Vance traveled to Bangor, Maine, earlier this month, telling a crowd of supporters there that fraud had
festered in the state under the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills. In
Maine, supporters were receptive to the idea that Mr. Vance could lead the
party in 2028.
John Lugo and his wife,
Denise Dineen, were in the crowd, wearing matching hats that said “Make America
Healthy Again.” Mr. Lugo, a small-business owner, said that he saw Mr. Vance as
an “extremely articulate” partner to Mr. Trump.
When asked if he thought
the vice president should be the next Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Lugo
kept his options open.
“Him or Rubio,” Mr. Lugo
said. “Rubio would be good, too.”
When Mr. Lugo and his
wife turned to face Mr. Vance as he took the stage, another name was inscribed
on the back of their ball caps: “KENNEDY.”
