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| Vice President JD Vance boards Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on November 2. Tom Brenner/Getty Images |
United States’ Vice President JD Vance is seriously weighing whether to skip a 2028 presidential campaign following last week’s damaging midterm results, according to people close to him.
Although no final decision has been made, conversations with about a dozen allies and advisers suggest Vance is struggling to balance his political ambitions with a fractured MAGA coalition and the pressures of family life.
He remains committed to rebuilding the movement that delivered victory in 2024, but is uncertain whether he is the right person to lead it forward.
One ally said any outcome would not be surprising: “He’s only 42. He’s young enough that he can have a comeback should this environment make success impossible. It just may not be his time.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised by any decision he makes,” one of those people said. “He’s only 42. He’s young enough that he can have a comeback should this environment make success impossible. It just may not be his time.”
Vance, once considered the clear 2028 frontrunner, has not set a timeline for the decision, and a White House bid remains firmly on the table. Some allies are adamant that it is more likely than not that he runs.
His supporters were encouraged by a lengthy message Vance posted on X the morning after the midterms, which blamed the rampant Republican losses on the Iran war, believing it signaled his framework for a potential presidential campaign. The post also irritated President Donald Trump, sources told CNN.
But in private conversations with friends and loyalists, Vance sounds less certain. People close to him insist he entered the year uncommitted, and the arrival of his fourth child this summer had already fueled speculation inside the White House that he might put his presidential ambitions on hold.
More recently, though, his deliberations have centered on a fundamental question: Can he, or any Republican, win in the political climate Trump has created?
Looming over those calculations is the war with Iran, which allies see as perhaps the greatest obstacle to Vance’s presidential ambitions. Much may depend on whether Trump can bring the unpopular conflict to a swift conclusion without further eroding the public’s trust in the White House.
“The question isn’t if JD can do it. It’s: If the Iran war is still happening, can any Republican do it?” a Vance ally said. “If they don’t end the war in Iran, no Republican has a shot at 2028.”
Some of Vance’s fiercest allies insist that Vance is not overtly fazed by the results of the midterms, noting that two years is a long time during which political favor can swing back his way. They also remain committed to the belief that should he enter the 2028 race, he will dominate the Republican primaries.
Terry Schilling, the president of the American Principles Project, an influential social conservative advocacy group, said it would be a mistake for Vance to forgo a run out of political expediency.
“He’s basically teed up to be the general and we’re going into one of the biggest battles,” Schilling said. “I would be surprised if he doesn’t run.”
Other Republicans, smelling blood in the water, have already made moves to seize the 2028 spotlight, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Vance’s allies insist they are unbothered by the emerging competition, noting that a divided Republican field helped Trump secure the nomination in 2016 and 2024.
For Vance, the immediate priority is rebuilding and reenergizing a MAGA coalition that appears to have rapidly collapsed.
He has an increasingly powerful ally in that effort, as Trump loyalist Stephen Miller was promoted to White House chief of staff this week. Miller is widely believed to share Vance’s interest in steering the administration toward the campaign promises that animated many of Trump’s followers. Both men realize that they first need to find a swift exit to the war, something the administration has consistently struggled to do.
But the scale of the task has become painfully clear after the November 3 shellacking delivered to Republicans by voters, including many 2024 Trump supporters. The breadth of the losses far eclipsed even the bleakest predictions of White House officials and members of Trump’s political operation. And there’s still no clear answer to ending the Iran war, a critical point in this effort.
Polls show that essentially every faction that helped elect Trump in 2024 pivoted hard away from him this year, including men, young people, Latinos and white non-college educated voters.
White House officials and advisers to both Trump and Vance acknowledge the steep climb in convincing these voters to come back. If there is a sliver of optimism, they believe it lies in the unpopularity of the Democratic Party and the growing overall disillusionment with government.
Vance’s allies and advisers envision that, if he runs, he would try to recapture the anti-Washington, anti-establishment message that propelled him to the Senate and then the vice presidency. But that’s a considerably harder sell given his current position of power.
A Democratic-controlled Congress could also offer a new foil for Vance in the coming months after he spent much of the last two years blaming former President Joe Biden for many of the hardships facing voters.
“That’s something we can use to our advantage,” one Vance ally said, adding that a lot can change in the span of two years. “Just look at how far Trump has fallen since his win.”
But Rich Baris, a pollster closely connected to the MAGA movement, said the damage runs deeper than ordinary voter frustration. Many Trump supporters, he added, feel betrayed by Trump’s failure to make life more affordable and his broken promise not to start new foreign wars.
Baris argued Vance remains the Republican best positioned to pick up the pieces, but it may require him to forge a new populist coalition.
“MAGA is dead,” Baris said. “The problem the vice president is going to have is that he has to motivate (MAGA voters) and make them believe again, because the Republican brand has completely lost credibility with them.”
The divisions have not only created space for potential primary challengers to Vance, but for conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson, an influential Trump critic, to tease a third-party bid that could upend the political landscape in 2028. It’s a threat that Baris said shouldn’t be dismissed, and one that Vance, a close friend to Carlson, can help the party avoid.
“This is why I think Vance is the only path forward,” Baris said. “They absolutely cannot win if they don’t repair these rifts.”
Vance also faces questions about the political machinery he would need to run a presidential campaign, given many of the GOP’s big-money operations suffered significant setbacks in the midterms. It’s not clear, for example, whether MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned super PAC, or billionaire Elon Musk’s America PAC, both major midterm spenders with few victories to show for it, will remain engaged on Vance’s behalf in 2028.
Meanwhile, Turning Point USA, which has already endorsed Vance, saw its preferred candidates swept in Arizona’s statewide races and failed to make noticeable headway in New Hampshire and Nevada, where it had hoped to build toward 2028. And in Ohio, political operatives close to Vance not only failed to get Vivek Ramaswamy to the governor’s mansion, the campaign drew widespread condemnation for an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother that some Republicans blamed in part for the party’s losses.
But Vance’s allies have brushed off those challenges, arguing it was the national environment, not those groups’ tactics, that led to the dismal midterm results.
They also maintain that, should Vance decide to run, they are wholly confident there will be a financial juggernaut to sustain his campaign. The sources pointed to his close relationships with Musk and former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, among other wealthy allies. Vance also spent the past year as the Republican National Committee finance chair, a role that gave him regular face time with the party’s biggest donors.
This week, a close-knit group of donors aligned with Vance called the Rockbridge Network met in Houston to begin regrouping as they await his decision, a source familiar with the meeting told CNN.
The elephant in the room: Iran
The clearest indication yet of how Vance might navigate this new political landscape came the morning after the midterms, when he delivered a blistering assessment of the Republican defeats that laid bare his own electoral vulnerabilities moving forward.
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote. “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
Vance’s criticism of the war was hardly surprising to anyone who has spoken to him about Iran in private. He vocalized his reservations directly to Trump, before strikes were even launched.
But his blunt and searing critique caught many in the administration off guard, with some officials interpreting it as an attempt by the vice president to distance himself from an unpopular war to protect his political future.
Trump received a heads up that Vance was planning to blast out a statement and has publicly shrugged it off. Privately, however, Trump has criticized Vance for how he handled his commentary, two people familiar with the discussions said.
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| President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance salute during a ceremony in honor of Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery on November 11. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images |
While Trump has come to agree Iran was largely responsible for the party’s heavy losses, those people said he was “pissed off” that Vance didn’t publicly stand by Trump’s decision to enter the war and defend its merits.
“He was right, other than one thing,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “He should have made one other statement: ‘If you had it to do again, would you do it again?’ The answer is yes.”
A White House official told CNN: “The White House was aware before the post went out. POTUS was briefed beforehand as well and did not have any issues with it.”
On Thursday, November 12, Trump told Vance, whom he had previously tasked with leading Iran negotiations, to stand down and instead “focus his complete and total attention” on corruption.
“Those days have long since passed,” the president wrote on Truth Social, despite diplomatic talks resuming in recent days.
The saga has exposed a delicate tension between Trump and Vance that will be closely watched as they navigate political succession.
While Vance was put on the ticket in 2024 in part to take the baton from Trump, the president has not said he will endorse his vice president should he run.
Vance, for his part, has said he expects to have the president’s support if he decides to enter the race.
Behind closed doors, Trump has told aides and allies that he wants to stay out of the presidential primary for a while and see how different candidates fare before putting his finger on the scale.
Asked by “60 Minutes” if he would eventually make an endorsement, Trump replied: “Probably, not necessarily.”
Elsewhere in Vance’s 617-word message on Iran, the vice president said Washington should focus on ending the war, tackling affordability, refocusing on domestic challenges and reconsidering America’s relationship with Israel.
One Trump fundraiser told CNN that his post on X was widely seen as a sign that Vance was leaning toward jumping in. Baris called it the first time someone inside Trump’s inner circle acknowledged the anger felt by many of his supporters. Some Trump officials privately said they were glad someone finally said the quiet part out loud.
But Schilling, who remains supportive of Vance, acknowledged how dramatically the midterms have reshaped the Republican presidential contest.
“I do think the field has been blown open,” he said, “and there isn’t an heir apparent.”
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