The next presidential election is several eternities away from now in terms of politics. Only a fool would try to predict the form of the political conversation in three years, much less a few months in the unpredictable Trump era.
But we do know the next election will offer Americans new choices on the right and the left. There won’t be a Trump, a Clinton or a Bush anywhere near the ballot.
About half of Americans said in a new CNN Poll that the 2028 presidential election has been on their mind at least somewhat. At Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest conference in Arizona last weekend, the conservative group’s leader Erika Kirk all but endorsed Vice President JD Vance, even though he has not launched a campaign.
Assuming he does run, Vance will have to hold together President Donald Trump’s fragile voter coalition — cracks were on display at Turning Point — and fend off other Republicans who want their shot at the White House.
I talked to CNN’s Eric Bradner, who covers Republicans, about the current state of play, who we expect to launch a 2020 presidential campaign and where the party will head in the looming post Trump era.
Our conversation, conducted by phone and edited for clarity, is below.
And for a look at the Democratic field, check out this conversation with CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere.
JD Vance is Republicans’ 2028 pace car
WOLF: Democrats will have a wide-open field with no clear leader in 2028. What will Republicans have?
BRADNER: Republicans have a sitting vice president in JD Vance, and in recent months, it has become increasingly clear that he holds the 2028 starting gun in his hand. He has said he doesn’t plan to do anything until after the midterm elections next year, and then he plans to sit down with President Trump and talk about 2028. So the timeline for Vance to become an active candidate, if that’s what he chooses to do — and I think just about everyone expects that he will — is probably at least a year away. But it seems increasingly clear that a lot of Republicans are going to be waiting on him, and some big names are going to defer to him.
Trump is teasing a Vance-Rubio ticket
WOLF: Trump likes to make jokes about Vance and Rubio running together. Vance made a joke recently about the idea that Rubio could run. Could two Trump officials challenge each other or come out with a unified ticket?
BRADNER: I’m not sure President Trump is actually joking. One of the many newsy tidbits in the Vanity Fair profile of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was Marco Rubio saying that if JD Vance runs for president, Vance will be the Republican nominee, and he will support him.
Rubio is obviously someone who is in President Trump’s good graces; who has run for president before, knows how to do it, and would be a viable candidate in any race he entered. But he does not seem to have an appetite to take on JD Vance, at least at this early stage of the Trump presidency.
Now, Vance is the vice president. He is attached to President Trump for all four years. Marco Rubio, like many Cabinet officials, could leave at some point. He could leave after the midterms. But as of right now, President Trump keeps floating this idea of a joint Vance-Rubio ticket, and Rubio says he’s not going to take on Vance. It certainly shouldn’t be ignored when two of the key players in all of this don’t seem to be pouring any cold water on it.
It’s worth remembering, Marco Rubio — despite running for president more than eight years ago — is still only 54 years old. He could be a vice presidential nominee and still run for president again one day.
Vance will need to become his own candidate. But he’s morphed before
WOLF: Vance is ascendant in taking up Trump’s mantle. It’s actually pretty rare for a vice president to be elected president straight out of the vice presidency. The last person to do it was George H.W. Bush. Before that, you have to go back more than 100 years. It’s almost a curse. How would Vance deal with it?
BRADNER: It’s tricky, because Vance would have to own everything the Trump administration does. There’s no way for him to separate himself from it, unlike some other names who could be 2028 contenders.
For example, (Texas Sen.) Ted Cruz on Capitol Hill this week went hard after Trump’s TV regulator. (Gov.) Ron DeSantis in Florida is saying that state has the right to move forward on artificial intelligence regulations, despite President Trump wanting to institute a single national policy. Other Republicans in other positions have the ability to break with the president and get some separation on unpopular policies or policies where they see the political ground shifting.
JD Vance isn’t going to have that ability. When Vance becomes a candidate, there will probably be conversations between him and the president over whether and how he can split with President Trump on some issues without incurring the president’s wrath.
WOLF: It might behoove Vance to distance himself from Trump on some things, but that’s almost impossible to do and stay inside of Trump’s inner circle, where everything is about Trump.
BRADNER: He might need to look for ways to demonstrate that he is his own man, a different kind of political figure than Trump, without necessarily disagreeing with the president publicly on policy issues.
He has evolved. He could continue to evolve
WOLF: Vance is someone whose politics and allegiances have shifted multiple times in his relatively short political career. So you could see him evolving pretty easily yet again.
BRADNER: When he ran for Senate, he very quickly rejected a number of positions he’d taken in the past, and that’s a history that Republican rivals in that Senate primary certainly used against him, and I would not be surprised to see revisited ahead of 2028.
DeSantis, Cruz and others on the outside looking in
WOLF: Let’s talk a little bit about some of the Republicans that are that are showing some of their independence. You mentioned DeSantis and Ted Cruz. There was an interesting story about the White House being a little frustrated about an anti-abortion group backed by Sen. Josh Hawley (Missouri). Who do you think Republicans view as the most likely non-White-House Republican that could make a run against somebody like Vance?
BRADNER: Having run for president before would be an advantage for some potential candidates, like Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz, not just because they have already made their introductions in the early states, but because they’ve had to figure out answers to some of these questions. DeSantis is interesting; 2024 was a colossal failure for him. He probably got into the race too late, burned a ton of money and didn’t have much to show for it at the end of that race. But he has not clashed publicly with President Trump in the same way that some of these other figures on Capitol Hill, like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and (Kentucky Sen.) Rand Paul have. DeSantis also has a chance to deliver a big win for Republicans in the spring if Florida joins the nationwide redistricting arms race.
Practice makes perfect
WOLF: You said it can be a benefit to have run before. I’ve always thought it must be a net negative to appear like you’re a loser. Do you need a trial run to get good as a candidate?
BRADNER: There’s been a split between the parties on this. With 2020 as an obvious exception, Democrats have tended to favor a fresh face, and Republicans have nominated people who have run before and failed. Ronald Reagan is a great example of this. George H.W. Bush is a great example of it.
WOLF: Donald Trump, arguably, who won, lost and then won again.
BRADNER: Throughout modern American history, I think you’ll find Republicans much more willing to seriously consider and nominate someone who has run before and failed.
Watch for Republicans positioning on key issues and testing Trump
WOLF: People have talked about Hawley as a potential presidential candidate for his entire career. Does he seem to be somebody that is destined to run for president?
BRADNER: There’s been an expectation around him essentially since he was elected to the Senate, that one day he will run for higher office. The anti-abortion-rights group that he started is obviously frustrating the White House. They view this issue as a drag on Republicans in the midterms, whereas Hawley views it as a foundational position for the party, and it’s also one that is his position. Hawley’s position is extremely popular with Christian conservatives in Iowa, for example, a state that has long been the first to weigh in in the presidential nominating process. Whether he’s doing this with an eye on 2028 specifically or is just keeping his options open, it’s tough to tell at this point.
How a libertarian could go mainstream
WOLF: You mentioned Rand Paul. His father ran a couple of times as a Republican and a libertarian. Paul is out of the Republican mainstream, but an interesting political character because he’s so true to his ideology. What would be the path for somebody like that? Would a Rand Paul presidential campaign just be to drag the party toward the libertarian cause, or would it be a serious campaign?
BRADNER: He would like it to be a serious campaign. What’s worth keeping in mind about Rand Paul is that he was one of the earliest and most vocal Republican critics of President Trump on tariffs and on the spending levels in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. The state of the economy would be key to his chances of getting much of a hearing from Republican voters.
Right now, the political environment is such that a lot of Republicans, including early-state voters I’ve talked to, are turned off by seeing him criticizing the president on some of these issues. However, three years is an eternity. Two years is an eternity in politics, and by the time the 2028 race is really shaping up and people are preparing to head to the polls, the state of the economy could be much different.
Republicans could go conservative or MAGA; nobody is talking about moderates
WOLF: Democrats have this debate over whether the party is going to go in a progressive or a moderate direction. You don’t really hear that among Republicans whether it’s going to go in a conservative or moderate direction. It seems like it’s just going to go in a in a conservative or a MAGA direction. Are there any moderate Republicans who could run for president?
BRADNER: A lot of these differences are being kept in-house, in part because the party is in power, and a lot of 2028 potential contenders are in the Trump administration. But in terms of moderates, I think it’ll be interesting to see how some Trump loyalists position themselves.
There are also some people on the periphery of 2028 who could be interesting factors. For example, (Georgia Rep.) Marjorie Taylor Greene is not someone anyone would ever describe as moderate, but she has had an enormous falling-out with President Trump, and has taken a moderate position on health care spending, at least.
Nikki Haley is still involved in politics. She’s working at the Hudson Institute, occasionally publishing commentary on foreign policy, national security, antisemitism. She’s still active on social media. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is someone who has obviously run for president as an independent before. His wife recently told NewsNation that he won’t run in 2028, but he is an interesting person to watch. he No. 1 predictor that someone is going to run for president is that they have run for president before, and that he has.
So I don’t know that there will be a moderate versus conservative framework to the 2028 election. I think it could be more about emphasis and personalities. Ted Cruz, for example, is very conservative, but he has been jabbing at Tucker Carlson, who’s certainly a JD Vance ally. Those kinds of divides over personality, over issues of importance … could be where we see bigger and more public divides early on, at least.
A loose coalition without an ideological center
WOLF: That list of people you went through is a remarkably loose political coalition. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has his MAHA movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been a conspiracy theorist and is flirting with being a more mainstream person. There’s Rand Paul, who is all but libertarian. There’s Josh Hawley, who’s this kind of evolving plains populist. I feel like Republicans used to stand for limited government and lower spending, but the breadth of ideas in that list is vast. What is the next Republican ideology?
BRADNER: Republicans are going to have to decide what kind of party they want to be once President Trump is no longer the dominant figure within it. I’m not sure how much they’re going to be able to sort that out in 2028 because he will loom large as the sitting president and the Republican with the biggest megaphone in the country. But it’s the right question to ask, and it’s going to be one that Republicans are sorting through over these next few years.
There was a party before Trump, and there’s the modern Republican Party in which Trump has thrown off so many of these dogmas that what we traditionally thought the Republican Party had. What it looks like moving forward is a huge unanswered question.
Look for departing Cabinet officials
WOLF: What are the signs you’re looking for from potential candidates?
BRADNER: The first thing I’m going to be watching is when some of these cabinet officials depart the Trump administration. Most of the time, in most administrations, there is a shake up after the midterms that could potentially free some of them to work toward their own political ambitions. Book deals are always worth watching when they’re announced, because most politicians don’t just write a book for no reason. And then I think political moves that are designed to allow potential presidential candidates to stake out some of their own ground, the way (California Gov.) Gavin Newsom did among Democrats on redistricting, right? It’s much easier for Democrats to do that right now, but I do think that some Republicans will be looking for their own ways to establish territory they can claim as their own. That’s why I think DeSantis is worth watching on redistricting; Ted Cruz on issues like free speech and taking on Tucker Carlson.
WOLF: Trump is so unique because he has this committed following of supporters. I can’t think of a Democrat or a Republican — maybe RFK Jr.? — that has any kind of committed following, people who like them and are committed specifically to them? Am I missing something?
BRADNER: What makes this 2028 race so fascinating is that it’s wide open, right? There seem to be plenty of Republicans who assume that JD Vance will inherit the MAGA movement. Erica Kirk essentially endorsed Vance, which could clearly be a sign of the role Turning Point USA, an important advocacy group, could play. But other than RFK Jr., who built that movement running as an independent, no one really brings that kind of devoted following to the table. That’s why any polls that you see right now … are of extremely limited value, because whether anyone can build that kind of movement and the issues that would allow them to put it together or maybe be seen.
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