SHOCK POLL: Rubio crushes Vance 45% to 30% for 2028 — but ‘Steve Deace Show’ says it’s mostly an illusion



A May 2026 AtlasIntel national poll found that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now leading the 2028 Republican field with 45% support, ahead of Vice President JD Vance (30%), who was leading the same poll by 24 points in December 2025.

On a recent episode of the “Steve Deace Show,” Deace and his panel of co-hosts Todd Erzen and Aaron MacIntyre along with Rob Eno, Blaze News managing editor, addressed the legitimacy of the “Rubio surge” and what it means for the MAGA movement.

"Are we buying the Rubio surge?” Deace asks the group.

Erzen believes the Vance vs. Rubio conversation is really just an attempt to “make people care” again.

“They're clearly both decent men, capable men. But we've got a hundred other things that should be priorities other than turning this into sports radio, but this is what the entire movement does because it's not good at really doing anything else,” he sighs.

Eno speculates that Rubio’s visibility is a likely contributor to the polling numbers.

“Do I think that Rubio has surged a little bit because he's gotten the spotlight? Probably. ... Do I think that it matters right now before the midterms? Probably not,” he says.

AtlasIntel’s new polling results, he argues, are likely influenced by the age and media consumption of the voters.

Pointing to a Quantus poll that exposed a massive age split among GOP primary voters in the Thomas Massie race, Eno says there’s an “insane” difference between “old Boomers that watch Fox News and the younger, Vance-type, America First, MAGA people.”

Given Rubio’s high polling numbers, he believes that older Republicans likely dominated the survey population. But as they “age out,” we might see Vance’s number swell, as younger audiences begin to make up a larger share of the Republican primary electorate.

MacIntyre expresses skepticism about Rubio’s 15-point lead over Vance.

“I don't think that Marco Rubio is 15 points ahead at this point. I think it's closer than maybe a lot of people who think that Vance is a shoo-in would like to admit,” he says.

Deace believes that the AtlasIntel poll is less about genuine Rubio vs. Vance support and more about “dissatisfaction with the direction of the Trump administration as a whole.”

He explains that with Trump pouring almost all his “political capital” into foreign policy (Rubio’s domain as secretary of state), Rubio benefits from a clear, high-visibility message that makes him look strong, while Vance is left handling the tougher, less popular domestic issues like cutting waste and fraud. The poll, therefore, is less about the two individual men and more about where the administration is focusing its energy.

Deace reiterates Eno’s point about the deep divide among the conservative base regarding what it means to be “America First.”

“We're determining what is the base right now,” says Deace.

“This time last year, we were coming on the tail end of Trump's offensive right out of the inauguration gate. We were all very united. There was an agenda. Right now, nobody knows what the agenda is,” he continues.

But a year and a half into Trump’s second term, the conservative base is confused and deeply divided over domestic and foreign priorities.

“We're spending way more political capital on Iran and the Middle East than we were willing to spend to clean up Minneapolis, our own borders, mass deportations, or anything else, and so this has created a mass schism right down the middle,” says Deace.

“All I think this [poll] is right now is a snapshot that shows this space is very divided overall on what our priorities ought to be.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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Are Republicans COOKED in the midterms? 4 Blaze Media voices respond.



Despite the left’s stubborn defense of violence, lawlessness, radical ideologies, and the hollowing out of traditional institutions, Republicans are still projected to get obliterated in this year’s midterm elections.

But it’s not just forecasts pointing to grim midterm results. Blue is already encroaching on red districts.

“We just lost Donald Trump’s home state legislative district. ... That’s zapping some of my enjoyment, if not pretty much all,” BlazeTV host Steve Deace says.

On this episode of the “Steve Deace Show,” Deace and his co-hosts Aaron McIntire and Todd Erzen sit down with Blaze News managing editor Rob Eno to discuss these bleak midterm prospects and whether any hope remains for the conservative base.

“I know it’s still seven-plus months until the midterms here, all right, but let’s just go ahead and ask the question that a lot of people are asking: Are we cooked?” Deace asks the panel.

Erzen’s response is a balance of pessimism and hope. “I guess I’ll say no,” he tells Deace.

“The left is so evil and so decadent and so dumb. Improvement has to happen, Steve, in the time frame you’re talking about, but it’s not going to take perhaps as much as we think it will circumstantially. That being said, we might be [cooked],” he explains.

McIntire is less optimistic. “As of this moment, yes,” he says bluntly.

“I just think there are too many warning signs right now and too many signs that there is no even action or intention to action within much of Congress to deliver on President Trump’s what we were told was a mandate,” he adds, arguing that “[the party] is not delivering on that mandate.”

Eno believes Republicans aren’t only cooked in midterm elections — they’re cooked in general.

“We’re going to lose the Senate and the House,” he predicts.

The list of losses for the Trump administration keeps growing, he argues, citing the ongoing war with Iran, skyrocketing gas prices, fertilizer shortages driving up food prices, and poor polling in key Senate races.

“I do not see how we get out of this, and I don’t think seven months is a long period of time. ... Unless the economy turns around, I don’t think we win,” Eno says frankly.

Erzen, however, offers a bit more optimism.

Even if the economy “doesn’t turn around” or “even gets a little worse,” he believes “two political miracles” — such as a “major arrest” of an elite tied to Epstein or passing the SAVE Act — could still change the odds in Republicans’ favor.

“People are so off-balance right now as voters. I don’t know what they think they prioritize on any given day,” he says.

But Eno pushes back on the SAVE Act’s potential impact.

“If you’ve lied to the voters, the SAVE Act saving anything has the hubris of imagining that the American people that are citizens are going to vote for this bunch of clowns, and they’re not with what they see,” he says, alluding to the widespread frustration over the administration’s broken promises on the economy, mass deportations, and avoiding new wars.

Deace largely agrees with Eno that Republicans are “cooked” in the midterms if little changes.

“I could list off a handful of things they could do that are all somewhat relatively achievable. ... But as we’re sitting here on March 27, if I listed those things off and asked you guys how many of those things you think they’re going to do, you might say one if we’re lucky — and so that’s where the ‘we’re cooked’ sits in,” he says.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

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Who is Vance Boelter — the enigma allegedly behind the deadly Minnesota attacks?



Last weekend on June 14 — the same day No Kings protests ignited across the country — a gunman carried out targeted shootings in Minnesota, killing Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman (DFL) and her husband, Mark, and wounding Democratic state Senator John Hoffman (DFL) and his wife, Yvette.

The suspect is Vance Luther Boelter, whose identity was first reported by Blaze Media’s Julio Rosas. Boelter, who allegedly disguised himself as a police officer to carry out the attacks, has been charged with six federal counts, including two counts of stalking, two counts of murder through use of a firearm, and two counts of firearms offenses. On the state level, he faces four felony counts: two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder.

However, it’s been nearly a week, and Boelter’s exact motive remains unclear. He was appointed to the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board by two Minnesota governors — first in 2016 by then-Governor Mark Dayton (D) and again in 2019 by Governor Tim Walz (D). The shootings took place on No Kings Day — a series of nationwide, mostly left-wing protests in the U.S. advocating against perceived authoritarianism in the Trump administration. Further, No Kings fliers were found in the suspect's vehicle.

At first glance, he appears to be aligned with the Democrat Party. And yet he is accused of specifically targeting Democrat representatives. In fact, the list allegedly found in his vehicle supposedly named Democrat officials exclusively. Reports that Boelter was vehemently opposed to abortion further muddy the waters.

“People on the right and on the left, we want to put suspected killers in a box,” says Liz Wheeler. “We want to say, ‘That person's left-wing; that's the Democrats’ fault.’ The left wants to say, ‘That person's a Trump supporter; it's Trump's fault.”’ But neither one of those approaches, she says, give us “a complete picture” of Boelter.

To get a better understanding of the complex character that is Vance Luther Boelter, Liz invited Blaze News managing editor Rob Eno to “The Liz Wheeler Show.”

“We know that he at one point in time had a security company of some sort with his wife, who it looks like he wasn't living with,” says Eno. “He was living at this 57-year-old guy’s house, renting a room” and “[working] at a 7-Eleven supposedly.”

Boelter’s friend David Carlson indicated in multiple reports that Boelter was a hardcore “Trump supporter,” but Eno says “there's no video” confirming this.

Liz then brings up a good point: Boelter’s alleged “manifesto” that was recovered from his vehicle has not been released to the public. “The only time that manifestos aren't released,” she says, “is when it's a left-wing ideologue who commits this violence and they don't want all left-wingers to be smeared.”

“But then we have the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota … Joe Thompson, who said that he hasn't even seen a manifesto and that there isn't one,” she adds.

“I don’t know what the guy’s motivation was,” says Eno, noting that it’s possible he thought his actions would “save children.”

But Liz sees a glaring contradiction: Boelter was “appointed by Governor Tim Walz” — one of the most progressive governors on abortion, which Boelter supposedly despises. But if Boelter is a secret Republican who wanted to get back at Democrats, why would he target Melissa Hortman, who had just recently “voted with Republicans to prevent taxpayer money from going to criminal illegal aliens?”

That makes him seem like “a Democrat that's disgruntled,” says Liz. “I don't think that he fits into a left versus right ideological box.”

To hear more of Boelter’s conflicting characteristics, watch the video above.

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Zuckerberg ADMITS government censorship, changes tune on free speech



Elon Musk is no longer alone in his quest to ensure our First Amendment rights are respected on social media platforms — as Mark Zuckerberg has just thrown his hat in the freedom ring.

Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has announced that the company will be adopting X standards and restoring free speech protections across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta platforms. Meta is also doing away with its third-party fact-checking program and will instead mimic X’s community notes system as well as remove criminal and fake content.

“I hear the words that Zuck has said, he says he wants free speech, but I don’t know if it’s really going to sink in that this is actually happening,” Jill Savage of “Blaze News Tonight” tells co-host Matthew Peterson and BlazeTV media critic Rob Eno.

“Are we just supposed to forget the past? We know how this has gone for years on Facebook,” she adds.


“We absolutely know how this has gone for years on Facebook. I mean, they’ve spent a hundred million since 2016 funding fact-check companies that then get used to fact-check things that are true,” Eno explains.

In one of its statements, Meta’s Global Policy Chief Joel Kaplan explained that the company believed it was being safe and ensuring that inaccurate information wasn’t being spread, before admitting that’s not how it played out.

“Experts have biases and perspectives, and we shut down legitimate political speech including from people like us,” Eno says. “I mean, think of all the things that Facebook, because of the fact-checkers, said were wrong. Hydroxychloroquine was a horse dewormer, it wasn’t a Nobel Prize-winning drug that treats viral infections, that masks work, that mRNA shots stop transmission.”

“All of these things,” he continues, “when our people said it, people at the Blaze, people at the Daily Caller, people at Breitbart, people across the spectrum said it — they were shut down.”

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Trump is SURGING as Kamala IMPLODES — analyzing KEY election polls



Election Day is now less than a week away, and Donald Trump appears to be gaining ground in some states.

A new poll shows the former president taking marginal leads in Wisconsin and New Hampshire — which might spell disaster for Kamala Harris.

“Look at the vote share,” Justin Robert Young, the host of “Politics Politics Politics,” tells Jill Savage and Rob Eno of “Blaze News Tonight.” “If Kamala Harris is at 47% or below, that’s where the Donald Trump campaign really, really wants them, because Donald Trump is essentially a hard-capped 48% candidate.”


“The trajectory seems to be going toward Trump,” Eno adds. “Harris is below other places where she’s been, especially with African-American voters.”

Harris has reportedly been spending this last week of the campaign going on “black podcasts” and “urban radio stations” for interviews.

“Do you think that they feel like they’re hurting ... with that vote, that they need to go get what should have been sealed, you know, for two generations — years ago?” Eno asks.

“No, it’s not a good sign for her to be trying to shore up and not specifically the black vote, the black male vote very specifically. They are very much worried about that,” Young responds, noting that Kamala recently went on Shannon Sharpe’s podcast, where he was reading pre-written questions “literally off cards.”

“I wouldn’t say that it’s ridiculous to say, ‘Well, maybe this is a major problem,’ because if there is tremendous attrition with the black male vote, it’s not just a problem for Kamala Harris, it’s a problem for the Democratic Party going forward,” he adds.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has “absolutely dominated this cycle” after his McDonald’s stunt, Joe Rogan podcast appearance, his huge Madison Square Garden rally, and his master response to Joe Biden calling his supporters “garbage.”

“There’s no doubt that this election is about Donald Trump, and both campaigns want it that way,” Young says. “The closing argument for the Kamala Harris campaign is that Donald Trump is a dangerous, unhinged, unchecked fascist that is going to destroy the country and democracy in general.”

“We will see whether or not that’s effective. If I were involved in their campaign, I would spend less time using my resources to direct attention to obvious Donald Trump wins,” he adds.

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Biden FCC fast-tracks Soros takeover of conservative radio in Pennsylvania



In an alarming move, the Federal Communications Commission voted this week to approve Audacy’s proposed bankruptcy reorganization — which would place the second largest radio station network in the clutches of George Soros.

“This put the would-be giant microphone in the clutches of a megalomaniac madman,” Jill Savage of “Blaze News Tonight” says. “I mean, let’s be honest. We’re six weeks away from the election; this is a huge move.”

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who is outspoken on the issue, told Glenn Beck in a recent interview that the FCC commission skipped a process that could take six months in order to quickly approve Soros' ownership.

This is unusual, in part because Soros has more than 25% foreign investors in the stake and has petitioned the Biden administration to fast-track his offer despite an assessment to its national risk securities.

Blaze News media critic Rob Eno is concerned by the move as well — especially considering its proximity to the election.

“Seven of the news and talk stations are in the battleground state of Pennsylvania,” Eno tells Savage and Matthew Peterson, noting that conservative hosts “could be out of jobs next week.”

“If they’re out of jobs next week right before the election, that is silencing a voice. And I think that the biggest part of this is the foreign collusion possibility, right?” He continues. “25% owned by foreign entities. We don’t know who they are. Are they Russian? Are they Chinese? Are they just British? I mean who are these foreign people?”

However, there is a silver lining.

“The good thing about this is that a lot more of the younger generation is getting their news from podcasts, from TikTok, from things like that. So, long term, this might not be as big of a problem,” Eno explains.

“The future is you have to subscribe directly to platforms like BlazeTV and Blaze News because if you don’t, they’re going to take it away,” Matthew Peterson adds.


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Bill Belichick talks taxes and why athletes are flocking from Massachusetts



Bill Belichick, former New England Patriots head coach and one of the most decorated coaches in the history of the NFL, is talking taxes.

According to legend, a Massachusetts law is discouraging star football players from signing with the New England Patriots.

“It’s Taxachusetts,” he jested. “Even the minimum players are pretty close to a million dollars, and so once you hit that million-dollar threshold, then you pay more state tax in Massachusetts.”

Rob Eno, BlazeTV Media Critic and a Massachusetts native, joins Jill Savage and the “Blaze News Tonight” panel to explain why athletes may be financially incentivized to sign with teams from states with more sensible tax codes and “why football is affected more than other professional sports.”

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“In November 2022, the citizens of Massachusetts actually voted to get rid of the Constitutional amendment that said they can't have a progressive income tax,” Eno explained, adding that instead, citizens opted to “have a one tax rate flat rate of 5%” as well as “a millionaire surtax of 4%.”

He points to NBA forward Grant Williams as an example of why athletes are flocking away from Massachusetts.

Williams, who played four seasons with the Boston Celtics, compared a Massachusetts’ salary of “$48 million with the millionaire’s tax” to the Dallas, Texas, equivalent of “$54 million.”

“There's this jock tax. ... Even if you live in Dallas, you're going to pay California taxes or Boston taxes for the day games that you do there, but if you live in Massachusetts or if you work for the Boston Celtics or you work for the New England Patriots and you come to Dallas, you're still going to pay that Massachusetts tax rate because that's the state where you're earning the money,” Eno explains.

The millionaire’s tax isn’t just hurting athletes though.

“The CPAs in Boston ... that deal with high-net-worth individuals have said that they have at least one client that's looking to leave. ... The owner of the Boston Celtics is making plans to leave” due to an “estate tax in Massachusetts,” Eno reports.

“Is this actually hurting the [Patriot’s] roster?” asks Jill.

“I think it’s actually hurting the roster, and I think that all of the teams are seeing this,” says Eno. “Major League Baseball and the [NBA], there’s luxury taxes,” but “in football, you can’t do that.”

“[Belichick] is actually making a political statement,” says Blaze Media’s editor in chief Matthew Peterson.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

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