Uninterested in a competitive Republican primary in 2028, Turning Point USA plans to deploy representatives across Iowa’s 99 counties in the coming months to build the campaign infrastructure it believes could deliver Vance, a Midwesterner from nearby Ohio, a decisive victory, potentially short-circuiting a fractious GOP race, insiders said.And Axios says (free to read here):
It is the latest move in a quiet effort by some in Trump’s orbit to clear the field of viable competitors. Earlier this month, Marco Rubio, the secretary of State previously floated by Trump as a possible contender, appeared to take himself out of the running.
“If Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him,” Rubio told Vanity Fair.
Vice President JD Vance plans to literally fly above MAGA's rising civil war — campaigning coast to coast in the midterms and sticking close to President Trump, while building support for an expected presidential run in 2028.Polling this early in a presidential cycle is usually meaningless, but Vance has an overwhelming lead right now -- 37.8 points in the Real Clear Polling average. He's at 48.8% and no other potential candidate is in double digits except for Donald Trump Jr., who's at 11%. But Junior is a friend and ally of Vance's, and he's making no obvious 2028 moves. In fact, no other Republican appears to be making 2028 moves -- not Junior, not Rubio, not Nikki Haley or Glenn Youngkin or Ron DeSantis or even Marjorie Taylor Greene. Many Democrats are making moves, but in the GOP, only Vance seems to be serious about the next election.
I know you all think it's hilarious that Turning Point, now headed by Erika Kirk, is all in on Vance. I'm sure you think Vance's marriage is a sham and he and Erika Kirk are doing the deed.
They might be, but I'm going to toss out a conspiracy theory I made up and half-believe: Vance wants you to think he's fucking Erika. He wants you to think he'll soon dump Usha, his Indian-American wife, and marry the blond Aryan widow. He knows that Christian conservatives don't really care whether their heroes are faithful husbands -- their two favorite presidents, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, are the only two divorced presidents we've ever had -- while the racists in the party really do care about Vance's marriage to a woman of non-European descent. Would Vance fake infidelity just to keep the racists in his coalition? Would his wife go along with the gambit, even going so far as to appear publicly without her wedding ring, just to advance his career? Who knows? It seems far-fetched, but I wouldn't put anything past the Vances and the grieving widow.
I'm old enough to remember Ross Perot, the billionaire who ran for president twice in the 1990s. He leaned right and appealed to many of the same kinds of voters who flocked to Donald Trump, but he regularly said one very admirable thing: "If you hate people, I don't want your vote." Approaching 2028, Vance is telling voters: If you hate people, hell yeah I want your vote.
Closing out the [recent] Turning Point USA conference, Vance called for party unity amid escalating conflicts among right-wing influencers over the acceptability of racism and antisemitism within Republican politics.Perot very clearly said that not every American was invited to his coalition. But Vance welcomes the haters.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests,” Vance said. “Every American is invited. We don’t care if you’re white or Black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between.”
I think Vance welcomes the haters for the obvious reason that he's a hater himself, a man who has championed German neo-Nazis, defended young Republicans who engaged in extremely racist group chats, and slandered Haitian immigrants as dog-eaters, all while following multiple racist accounts on social media.
But I see him on the verge of being sanewashed by the mainstream press.
Here's Axios:
Vance has no intention of taking sides in the civil war among celebrity MAGA podcasters, who are fighting bitterly and publicly over antisemitism and America's role abroad.When Vance's open embrace of bigots and bigotry is treated as nothing more than a campaign stragtegy, that's sanewashing. We have to fight hard to ensure that the media doesn't succeed in normalizing this extremely hate-filled man.
The feuds were a backdrop for Vance's appearance earlier this month at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest, where he condemned "endless, self-defeating purity tests," and said he "didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform."
Republicans close to Vance say he knows it makes no sense to antagonize any MAGA faction so far in advance of the 2028 primary. Vance, who was close friends with Charlie Kirk, has made opposition to censorship a key part of his political identity.
One person familiar with Vance's thinking said he's working to be a "voice of unity against the left."
I worry that this kind of coverage will make Vance seem acceptable to centrist swing voters. Many people think he's too dull to be a successful candidate, but after eight years of Trump -- twelve, really -- normie voters will probably want a pendulum swing back to boring and polished, and might be persuaded that Vance is the soft-spoken stylistic alternative to Trump that America needs, all while angry Republicans see in him the hate and inner rage they crave.
(I agree that Vance can't energize the Republican base the way Trump does, but I think the base feels his anger and responds to it. He isn't charismatic or grandiose the way Trump is, but I think he's a sort of Tom Ripley character -- cold-blooded and evil -- and the GOP base likes that.)
In order to keep normies on the hook, Vance had to defend his wife against a recent racist attack by the Hitler-loving podcaster Nick Fuentes -- but Vance triangulated, saying:
On Fuentes, I’ve criticized him in the past, but let me be clear: anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s---. That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.Vance paired Fuentes's name with the name of an MS NOW commentator, placing her name first and thus suggesting that what they said was equally vile (or Psaki's attack was worse). So what did they say? Psaki appeared on the I've Had It podcast and said this:
“I think the little Manchurian candidate, JD Vance, wants to be president more than anything else,” opined Psaki. “I always wonder what’s going on in the mind of his wife. Like, are you okay? Please blink four times, we’ll-, come over here. We’ll save you.”But Fuentes said this:
“And now they’re all in favor of a fat, race mixer who’s married to a jeet, who named his son Vivek ... and that’s your guy? Your guy is literally a fat, gay race traitor who married a jeet ...” Fuentes said, using a racial slur for Indians.
White nationalist Nick Fuentes attacks Usha Vance using anti-Indian racial slurs
— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) November 1, 2025
This is a man who had a private dinner with Trump in 2022 at his resort pic.twitter.com/X0EQe3xhEZ
Maybe it's just me, but if you used a word that's become analogous to the n-word and applied it to my wife, then brought my child into it, I'd be a lot angrier than I would be at Psaki's insult. I wouldn't equate the two. And I'd recognize that the racist insult was much worse for America than Psaki's snark.
But it gets worse. Fuentes subsequently doubled down, portraying "eat shit" as a literal dinner invitation in a vile way:
After JD Vance said in an interview published Monday that Fuentes can “eat s---” for his remarks, Fuentes disparaged Indian culture on his podcast...."Every American is invited" to Vance's coalition, the vice president says -- even the man who said this about Vance's wife and Indians everywhere.
“I really appreciate the invitation. It’s very gracious. I’ve said a lot of negative things about JD Vance, so for him to extend an invitation like that to me to have dinner, a traditional Indian dinner with him and his family, it actually moved me, it actually touched me a little bit,” Fuentes said.
“I said I’ve been nothing but antagonistic to this guy, really unprovoked – I started the beef. And so for him, in the spirit of the holiday and the spirit of Christmas, for him to extend an invitation in public like that to enjoy a traditional Indian dinner prepared by his wife with his family at the Naval Observatory – he’s a better man than me and I gotta give him a lot of credit for that. Credit where it is due," Fuentes said....
“But respectfully, I must decline. That’s sort of the whole point. I don’t want to eat s---.
“We don’t want them here because we don’t want to eat s---. I know they do that in India. I know they literally eat cow s---, I know that they will scratch their a—and then prepare food and eat s--- that way also," he said.
“We don’t want them here because we don’t eat s--- in America. We try to avoid eating s--- as much as possible. It’s why we wash our hands. So, respectfully, I will have to decline. Thank you, but no thank you. I will not be eating s---. I wish you the best on your Christmas Eve dinner. I hope that goes well for you guys.”
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