I’m going to make the case against thinking so. But honestly, I kind of agree.
The case for Junior.
You don’t need a complicated triple-bank-shot theory to explain why the president’s son has the inside track. It’s this simple: Because the Republican Party is a moronic personality cult, Donald Trump effectively has the power to pick his own successor. Whomever he endorses will be a prohibitive favorite among his slavishly loyal supporters.
Such is the power of the Trump name on the right, as Last notes, that Junior is already polling in second place in early 2028 primary polls, slightly ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It’s a distant second behind Vance, sure, but so what? The vice president is coasting on his high profile and the widespread assumption that he’s Donald Trump’s choice for heir apparent. If that were to change—if Junior were to take a more visible political role after the midterms and his father were to begin sounding iffy on Vance—the polling would change as well. Dramatically.
In fact, if the president started talking up his son as a potential candidate, my guess is that Vance would concoct an excuse not to run in 2028. “A [Trump Jr.] candidacy would carry the explicit endorsement of Trump the Father, making it impossible for the vice president or secretary of state to contest the race without becoming unpersoned,” Last writes. “Challenging Don Jr. would turn them into enemies of the people.”
Indeed. Why would J.D Vance, who’ll still be in his 40s in 2032, want to destroy his political future by challenging Junior in 2028 and antagonizing the Trump monarchy? He’d almost certainly lose the primary, and if he didn’t his “disloyalty” would nonetheless fatally alienate some MAGA fanatics whose votes he’d need to win the general election.
Depending upon how unfavorable the political environment is to Republicans in the next cycle, the VP might even prefer to step aside. If the GOP nominee is doomed to lose, better that it be Junior. Vance would then be set up for a comeback four years later in which he’d argue that only Trumpism without a Trump can prevail in a Trump-weary America.
The Republican establishment might favor a candidacy by the younger Trump for similar reasons. A resounding defeat for Junior in a Democrat-friendly 2028 cycle would give party apparatchiks an opening at last to say that Trumpism has run its course and it’s time to try something different. Losing with Vance risks having the opposite effect, convincing grassroots cultists that the GOP needs a Trump atop the ballot to win.
If the president wants to maximize his power over the GOP in retirement—and maximizing one’s power is what preliberalism is all about—then Junior is the purest, most reliable instrument for doing so.
The president also has reasons to prefer his son to Vance as nominee.
It’s not a pure matter of ensuring that his gene pool controls the Republican Party for the indefinite future, although it is of course partly that. Getting Junior elected president is the closest Donald Trump is likely to come to remaining in charge himself.
His opinions in retirement would surely weigh heavily on Vance, but the VP will need to separate himself from Trump on some unpopular issues if he runs in 2028, beginning with the Iran war. The unstated premise of his candidacy will inevitably end up being something like “Trumpism but minus the crazy bits” that voters dislike. “I’m my own man,” he’ll say when asked whether he intends to do his former running mate’s bidding.
By contrast, the implicit promise of a Trump Jr. campaign will be that he isn’t his own man. He will do the bidding of his father, giving his dad the extra term that the 22nd Amendment and the, ahem, election-riggers in 2020 cruelly denied him. If the president wants to maximize his power over the GOP in retirement—and maximizing one’s power is what preliberalism is all about—then Junior is the purest, most reliable instrument for doing so.
But lay aside those political implications. Last has another all-but-insuperable argument for why both Donald Trumps will be keen to have someone from the family on the ballot in 2028. It’s the only way to make sure that the gravy train keeps rolling:
In just cash and gifts, the Trump family’s total take [during the president’s second term] is already more than $2 billion (and that doesn’t include Jared and Ivanka or Barron Trump). That’s a hard number, not a paper value. If the Trump family no longer occupies the White House and relinquishes its claim on the Republican party—thereby removing the possibility that it could return to the White House—does that money keep flowing based on the business genius of Don, Eric, Barron, and Jared?
Probably not.
The Trump family will continue to cash in on its influence even in a GOP run by J.D. Vance, but there’s no question that Vance’s political interests would diverge from their financial interests in a way that Donald Trump Jr.’s political interests would not. Having converted a political party into a racket that’s made them filthy (well, filthier) rich, why would they now just … hand it over to the Hillbilly Elegy guy?
That would be a remarkable act of generosity. And racketeers aren’t known to be generous.
The case against Junior.
The argument that Trump Jr. remains an unlikely nominee in 2028 despite dad’s monarchical pretensions is as straightforward as the argument for believing he’s the favorite. Two words: Trump fatigue.
In five of the last 10 polls tracked by RealClearPolitics, the president has been under 40 percent approval. The worst of them, from Reuters, has him as low as 36 percent. At this point it’s easier to imagine how that might get worse than how it might get better. The Iran war resumes; the shocks to the global oil supply persist; inflation rises; a manic Trump tries to interfere aggressively in the midterms; many, many more tweets raising questions about his sanity ensue.
Fifteen months into Trump’s second term, we’ve already reached the point where Tucker Carlson is delivering introspective monologues about his culpability in helping to return the president to power. “I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” he told his brother during a podcast conversation this week. “You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional.”
“Tormented” with buyer’s remorse with 33 months still to go: Does that sound like a promising posture for Republicans to nominate another guy named Donald Trump in 2028?
Perceptions that Junior’s presidency would be a de facto third term for his unpopular father are such an obvious electoral disaster in the making for the GOP that I suspect all but the most ardent MAGA cultists would worry about it. Even some cultists might think twice: Unbound to the president’s son by the charisma and celebrity that they found captivating in his dad, they might reasonably prioritize maximizing the right’s chances of winning by nominating someone else over loyalty to the Trump offspring.
Junior also has potential vulnerabilities that J.D. Vance does not. He and his siblings cashing in on the presidency will surely be a target of corruption inquiries next year if Democrats flip the House. He’ll also feel obliged out of family loyalty (or filial expectations) to defend the Iran war, a subject which Vance and his allies have worked hard to distance the vice president from. And he’ll face rumors about his, ah, energetic public appearances that the more docile Vance will not.
Then there are what we might call the “known unknowns” of 2028.
I would not bet against anyone whom Trump endorses as nominee, but if the president were to pass away before making an endorsement then his son’s chances would drop to near-zero. Republicans would not want to weaken President Vance with a primary challenge in what looks to be a tough general election climate. And without Trump Sr. commanding the GOP base to back his son, I’m not sure that his name alone would create a meaningful constituency for Junior. My guess is that his support would top out roughly where it is now, at around 15 percent in primary polls. In all likelihood, he would opt to stay out of the race.
Conceivably, he might not run even if his father is still alive, kicking, and willing to endorse him. It’s the same argument I made earlier for why Vance might prefer not to challenge Junior in 2028 but in reverse: If Democrats are a prohibitive favorite in the next cycle due to Trump fatigue, better that some other Republican serve as the party’s sacrificial lamb for voters. Trump Jr. might choose to back Vance, expecting him to be crushed, and then run on a “Trumpism is back!” platform in 2032.
As for the Trump family’s gravy train, it’s true that Trump Jr. as party leader would be more willing to let that continue than Vance would—but it’s barely true. The vice president is so insecure about his support on the right that he pulls his punches even when denouncing bigots who insult his wife; he wouldn’t dare ask the Republican base to choose between him and the Trumps by moving against their corruption. Especially not as long as Trump Sr. is alive.
A three-man race.
I think Jonathan Last is mostly right about what the 2028 primary will look like if in fact the president designates his son as heir apparent.
Vance and Rubio will decline to run, concluding that they have too much to lose by trying and failing to depose the Trump royal family. They’ll endorse Junior and quietly hope for a GOP wipeout that fall, paving the way for them to run in 2032.
But Trump Jr. surely will get a challenge from the “America First” cohort that feels betrayed by his father. Carlson is the obvious candidate, having seemingly burned his bridges to the president with his comments about being “tormented” by his part in reelecting him. By challenging Junior he would be playing the same sort of role, ironically, that Trump himself played in 2016 by attacking the Bushes. We can’t win unless we repudiate the mistakes made by a man we all voted for, he’ll say to Republicans. No more Trumps.
A Junior-versus-Tucker primary in 2028 feels like the logical endgame given the trajectory this garbage party is on. No technocrats, no policymakers, no governing experience, just a loudmouth online troll who’s spent his life getting rich off of daddy’s name versus a conspiratorial postliberal propagandist who seems to think America’s core problem is that it isn’t more like Russia.
“I promise you that if the choice was Tucker or [Trump Jr.], Fox and the Wall Street Journal editorial page would make their peace with Junior,” Last writes. That’s true, and many other traditional Republicans would do the same. Conservatism can only be saved by nominating Donald Trump’s obnoxious son is precisely the conclusion that the last 10 disgraceful years of right-wing politics have been leading up to.
But I don’t think we’d end up with a two-man race.
A comparatively normal candidate with less to lose than Vance or Rubio by jumping in would want to test his luck with an electorate torn between two problematic populist chuds. “Tucker and Junior will split the Trumpists,” that candidate might calculate, “and I’ll clean up with the plurality that wants off the crazy train.”
Ted Cruz is an obvious possibility. He wants to run, he has a beef with Carlson, and he won’t have the same prestige as Vance or Rubio in 2032 if he stands aside in the next cycle and waits for a better opportunity. I think he’d get in and hope that the base divides roughly equally between the three candidates, then start pounding the point that Trump and Carlson are too kooky and repellent to win a general election.
But even if he miscalculated and became an also-ran, he could still salvage something useful from the campaign by pivoting to becoming an attack dog against Tucker for Junior. That would earn him the Trump family’s gratitude and potentially a Cabinet position in the unlikely scenario that Junior ends up as president.
In the end, though, the monarchy will likely get what it wants, as monarchies tend to do. That’s the sort of party Republican voters want to belong to and increasingly the form of government under which they want to live, so it’s Trump Jr.’s nomination if he wants it. Probably.