Vance’s path to 2028 just got much more complicated
Until late 2025, the Republican Party appeared likely to carry the MAGA coalition more or less intact into the 2028 presidential election. No successor can reproduce Trump’s personality or political style. But the coalition he assembled — working-class voters, growing numbers of Latinos and other former Democrats, and disaffected liberals such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — seemed durable.
JD Vance also appeared ready to clear the field. Marco Rubio, the only other plausible heir with national support, said just a few months ago that he would back Vance in 2028 if the vice president ran. The nomination looked less like a contest than a succession plan.
Much of the base may share Vance’s instincts, but the right is far from unanimous. His victory in an open contest cannot be assumed.
When I wrote my book, “JD Vance and the Future of the Republican Party,” the first sustained examination of Vance’s political thought and his place in the post-Trump GOP, that outcome seemed nearly certain. Vance would declare around the 2026 midterms. Rubio would endorse him. A few marginal candidates might enter, but none would reach double digits.
That scenario remains possible. It is no longer inevitable.
Two related developments have changed the equation: the fight over the U.S.-Israel relationship on the right and the war in Iran.
The first does not implicate Vance directly, but it has fractured the political world he must lead. Far-right podcasters and pundits have fixated on Israel and Jews for years. The dispute moved from the fringes toward the center when Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes on his podcast in October 2025, one month after Charlie Kirk — one of the right’s most effective coalition builders and gatekeepers — was assassinated. Influential voices soon moved beyond debating the wisdom and limits of the U.S.-Israel alliance to entertaining conspiratorial claims that Jews themselves threatened America.
The conservative movement has never been intellectually uniform. Libertarians, social conservatives, anti-communist liberals, nationalists, and other factions have long competed under the Republican tent. But the past nine months have produced something more corrosive. Positions on Israel, American Jews, and even individual media personalities have become loyalty tests. Conservatives increasingly sort themselves into camps and excommunicate dissenters.
Every presidential nominee must unite competing factions. Vance faces an unusual version of that task because he entered politics through the world of conservative intellectuals, think tanks, and media. He has friends and allies across rival camps. Preserving those relationships without appearing captive to any of them may become one of his hardest political tests.
The war in Iran has made that test harder. Trump’s coalition has always included incompatible foreign-policy factions: George W. Bush-era interventionists, advocates of a restrained and more hemispheric strategy, and hard-line isolationists. The alliance held as long as the administration avoided wars that lacked a clear connection to the American interest.
Iran forced the disagreement into the open. Will the Republican Party continue military campaigns in the Middle East, or will it reserve force for direct threats to the United States? Republicans answer that question very differently, and the war has split the party. Any 2028 nominee will have to navigate the divide.
Vance is no isolationist, but his instincts favor restraint. He is also more willing than many senior Republicans to question the scope of U.S. commitments to Israel. Those positions may appeal to much of the base while alarming interventionists, pro-Israel conservatives, and establishment donors.
Can Vance maintain relationships with controversial figures such as Carlson, reconsider American commitments in the Middle East, and still hold the Republican coalition together? A competitive 2028 primary would force those questions into the open. Much of the base may share Vance’s instincts, but the right is far from unanimous. His victory in an open contest cannot be assumed.
Rubio remains the likeliest challenger. He has said he will not oppose Vance if the vice president runs, but supporters continue to promote the popular secretary of state as a candidate. Rubio’s greater acceptability to establishment Republicans and his more interventionist foreign policy would turn the primary into a direct contest over the party’s future. He could expose every fault line Vance must bridge.
One factor may matter more than all the others: Trump’s endorsement.
RELATED: The GOP’s 2028 ticket math is already brutal
After the Iran war, Vance is less likely to coast through a genuinely open primary, especially if Rubio changes his mind. But Republicans may never receive an open primary. Trump still commands the party he reshaped, relishes the role of kingmaker, and will want to choose his successor.
An unequivocal Trump endorsement of Vance could end the contest before it begins. Other candidates could run, but they would struggle against a Trump-Vance succession. If Trump chooses Vance, the vice president may become the 2028 nominee by anointing rather than competition.
Trump has spoken more than once about the race to succeed him. Once he speaks definitively, the question may no longer be whether Vance can win the Republican primary. It may be whether the party is willing to hold one.
If Trump names Vance, he will likely become the future of the Republican Party. Trump will decide whether the party gets a primary or an anointing.
GONE IN 60 SECONDS: Why Conor McGregor's loss to Holloway marks the definitive end of his career
Conor McGregor is many things, but boring has never been one of them. The wild years between his major bouts dissolved into a blur of court dates, shattered bus windows, and enough marching powder to send a bull elephant into cardiac orbit.
He lived like a man trying to out-party Hunter S. Thompson while trying to convince the world he was still an elite athlete. He posted midnight sparring videos from triple-decker superyachts. He littered social media with unhinged, deleted voice notes. Even so, millions of loyal fans believed that he had the capacity to regain his crown.
Joe Rogan provided live commentary, and his excitement was infectious. He confessed to wanting to believe the former champion could still produce magic.
Cold snap
The first real sign that the legend possessed limits came on July 10, 2021, at UFC 264. McGregor’s tibia snapped against Dustin Poirier with the crack of a dry branch, forcing the Dubliner into a prolonged competitive exile. He traded the daily grind of the gym for titanium rod rehabilitation sessions. That injury became the permanent line between the fighter he actually was and the myth he tried to preserve. The subsequent years became a parade of recovery updates and constant promises of a return.
A return did materialize, though it was destined to be short-lived. Saturday — five years on from that shin-splintering night in Las Vegas — McGregor made his return to the Octagon at UFC 329 inside the T-Mobile Arena.
His opponent was fellow MMA veteran Max Holloway, a man who had spent McGregor’s entire hiatus fighting the absolute best featherweights and lightweights on the planet. The arena held a rather eclectic crowd featuring Mike Tyson, Tucker Carlson, and Vince Vaughn, all paying thousands of dollars to witness what was marketed as the greatest resurrection since Lazarus.
Flicker of hope
The opening bars of the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize" echoed through the arena. It was the perfect entrance music for the self-styled "Notorious" McGregor. Joe Rogan provided live commentary, and his excitement was infectious. He confessed to wanting to believe the former champion could still produce magic.
The Irish faithful, both in the stands and back home, shared that exact wish, desperately embracing the possibility of the greatest comeback in sporting history. We needed the Mac to conquer the improbable and completely rewrite the laws of the impossible.
But once the fight began, the delusion evaporated in just over 60 seconds. McGregor threw a heavy, wild kick, landed awkwardly on his right leg, and immediately lost his footing. Seconds later, he attempted a follow-up kick, only to wince in agony. The months of promotional hype and international press tours dissolved in an instant.
When the referee stepped in to call a halt to the misery, McGregor sat with his head buried in his hands. Bypassing the microphone entirely, he exited the cage in what felt like a permanent vanishing act.
RELATED: The sad decline of Conor McGregor
Off the cliff
McGregor recently celebrated his 38th birthday. He’s still a young man, but in the 155- to 170-pound divisions of mixed martial arts, 38 is a chronological cliff, where human reaction time slows just enough for elite 20-something killers to take your head off. History tracks a brutal, unbroken pattern of legend after legend refusing to accept this biological reality. The American B.J. Penn pushed past his prime into his late 30s, only to suffer a horrific seven-fight skid, looking slower and more vulnerable with every appearance.
The sport functions as a meat grinder with a marketing department. Tony Ferguson marched straight into his 40s on an agonizing eight-fight losing streak, transforming from the most feared lightweight on earth into a visual cautionary tale for the entire roster. The Brazilian superstar Anderson Silva lingered long enough to go 1-6 at the end of his UFC run, absorbing unneeded damage from athletes who used his name to build their own brands. The sport does not accommodate aging heroes.
Hit the showers
The financial machine will survive the loss of its favorite cash cow. McGregor completely transformed the UFC's economic reality during his meteoric rise. He turned a niche combat sport into a multibillion-dollar mainstream industry through an unprecedented marketing capability that no fighter before or since has replicated.
In his competitive prime, his ability to predict the exact round of a knockout matched his technical precision inside the cage, forcing even his harshest critics to respect his execution and refer to him as Mystic Mac. He made the sport immensely profitable for the executives, generating hundreds of millions of dollars while single-handedly inventing the concept of the MMA "money fight."
The knee injury at UFC 329 closes the door on any future athletic success inside the Octagon. There is no training regimen, experimental therapy, or medical procedure that can restore the fast-twitch reflexes and structural durability required to beat elite, hungry fighters. He leaves the sport as an incredibly wealthy promotional executive and a guaranteed Hall of Famer, but his time as a functional, successful competitor in the UFC has reached its absolute end.
Democrat congressman's Israel trip takes dramatic turn as officials dispute viral claims
A sitting United States congressman reported an unexpected altercation during his visit to Israel last week. While supporters call for accountability, others have insisted that the altercation was nothing more than a big misunderstanding.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) made a post on Saturday detailing an alleged detention by Israeli settlers and Israel Defense Forces.
'It's too much, too insulting and humiliating to America. This is how revolutions start.'
The video and photo in Rep. Khanna's initial post show multiple vehicles in the road with a few men standing outside one of the trucks. The vehicles appear to be blocking the road from the perspective of a camera in a vehicle facing the scene.
Two of the men are apparently holding firearms. One of them appears to be wearing full military garb.
"Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me & other Americans on my trip to Palestine. When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers & continued our detention," Khanna said in the caption of the post.
"They made a huge mistake. You will be hearing more soon," he added, linking a New York Times article at the end of the post.
The initial post has since garnered 10 million views on X.
The New York Times added some context behind Khanna's three-day trip. On Wednesday, the Democratic congressman was visiting the abandoned Palestinian Bedouin village of Khirbet Zanuta in the southern West Bank.
According to the report, "a car of men holding guns pulled up and blocked the narrow road out of the village." The men allegedly began harassing and taunting Khanna and his team. Eventually, members of the Israeli military showed up, yet instead of dispersing the settlers, they began blocking the road as well.
While Khanna was eventually allowed to continue his journey, he reflected on the fear that this incident inspired in him: “I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life. Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes.”
The Israeli military confirmed that troops were sent to the scene after receiving a report of settlers blocking vehicles near the Palestinian village, according to a statement by the Israeli military to Reuters.
"Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way," the military told Reuters.
On Monday morning, the congressman reposted bodycam footage capturing what Khanna described as an "unprecedented, illegal detention of Americans by a foreign country."
The video, posted by Nadav Wieman, executive director of Breaking the Silence, shows the point of view of a man walking up to several men in one car and speaking with them briefly before returning to a van. However, the man does not refer to Khanna by name, nor does Khanna appear at any point in the video.
Of the video, Wieman wrote: "The IDF is lying about the detention of Rep. Khanna. I was on the ground with him that day, and my body camera captured us being detained by both settlers and Israeli soldiers. The IDF did not disperse the violent settlers, as they claim. They explicitly sided with them."
However, others, including Ambassadors Mike Huckabee and Michael Leiter, have insisted that there is "more to this story," as Huckabee put it.
In a "Face the Nation" interview, Leiter, Israeli ambassador to the United States, explained that the congressman did not follow the proper protocol, leading to confusion: “There was not an alert. There was a question about visas, that's all.”
“When we requested he coordinate the trip with us, he rejected that by basically staying silent. So, that's unfortunate. This whole incident is unfortunate," he added.
Huckabee, U.S. ambassador to Israel, has acknowledged the incident in two separate posts, though both posts merely highlighted others' reporting on the incident, a fact which one of Huckabee's high-profile opponents attacked.
Additionally, Huckabee's two posts acknowledging the incident came several hours after Tucker Carlson's attack on his response:
An Amercian [sic] member of congress is threatened by foreign terrorists carrying American rifles, backed by a foreign military paid for by American taxpayers, and the US ambassador to that country says not a word in defense of his own countryman, and instead uses his social media accounts to promote his own vapid cable news appearances, which amount to propaganda for that same foreign country. It’s too much, too insulting and humiliating to America. This is how revolutions start. For the sake our nation, Mike Huckabee should be removed from his post immediately.
Blaze News contacted the Jerusalem Embassy's press office in an attempt to receive a comment from Huckabee but did not immediately receive a response.
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Allie Beth Stuckey calls out dangerous Islam myth pushed on Tucker Carlson’s podcast
On a recent episode of his show, Tucker Carlson interviewed Christian commentator and theologian J.D. Hall on Christian Zionism, dispensationalism, and related topics.
During the discussion, Hall argued that Islam has historically been “kind” to Christians, especially under the Ottoman Empire.
Allie Beth Stuckey, however, believes this Muslim-sympathic interview is another attempt by Carlson to “whitewash Islam.”
On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie dives into the real history of Islam’s relationship with Christianity.
“When the Ottomans were in control of the promised land for 400 years in the millet system, they didn't charge churches tax. Israel started just a few years ago,” Hall said, arguing that the Muslim rulers were actually “very kind to Christians.”
Citing the work of Raymond Ibrahim — a prominent historian specializing in Islamic history, the Middle East, and the historical and contemporary interactions between Islam and the West — Allie calls Hall’s claim about the taxes “misleading.”
“Churches weren't specifically taxed, but Christians ... had to pay an extra tax called the jizya that was imposed on non-Muslims. That was the only way to guarantee any kind of protection,” Allie corrects.
“It's true that the Ottomans allowed religious communities to govern many of their own affairs ... but non-Muslims remained second-class subjects. In addition to paying extra taxes, they faced restrictions on churches, on evangelism, legal rights, dress, bearing arms,” she continues.
Hall’s claim that Muslims were kind to Christians, however, “is just not true” at all, says Allie. “The Islamic Ottoman Empire persecuted Christians for centuries, killed them, enslaved them for centuries.”
She then gives the example of the Muslim takeover of Constantinople — “the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity” and “the last remnant of the Roman Empire.”
“So when the city's defenses gave way, thousands of civilians crowded into the Hagia Sophia, the city's largest church, seeking safety, and the Ottoman troops led by Sultan Mehmed II forced their way inside, and the refuge became the scene of looting, enslavement, widespread abuse, including mass rape,” says Allie.
She reads eyewitness accounts from Thomas the Eparch and Joshua Diplovatatzes (two Byzantine figures who witnessed and documented the city’s fall): “Then, he (Sultan Mehmed II) seized one of the grand duke’s daughters, who was quite beautiful, and made her lie on the great altar of the Hagia Sophia with a crucifix under her head and then raped her. Then, the most brutish of the Turks seized the finest noble women, virgins, and nuns of the city and violated them in the presence of the Greeks and in the sacrilege of Christianity.”
“Wow — things haven't changed in centuries,” says Allie. “This is the same thing that happens to Christians today in very similar manners, certainly in places like Nigeria and Uganda.”
“It is not just the pillaging of Christian women; it is the purposeful blasphemy against the Christian God.”
To hear more of Allie’s rebuttal, watch the episode above.
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Tucker Carlson declares ‘I’m out’ of the GOP — Glenn Beck issues urgent warning
On a recent episode of the "Can't Be Censored" podcast hosted by former Canadian journalists Travis Dhanraj and Karman Wong, longtime conservative commentator Tucker Carlson dropped a major announcement: He’s withdrawing his support for the GOP.
“There’s no chance I would support the Republican Party. Not going to support the Democratic Party. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he stated bluntly, citing his frustration with what he believes is the party putting a foreign country’s interests above America’s.
“I’m out, and if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out,” he added.
When he heard Carlson’s announcement, Glenn Beck issued a warning to both Washington Republicans and conservative voters.
Addressing Republican politicians, Glenn scolds, “I told you this would happen. For years, I have said this. I said the day would come when your own people would stop defending you, when their loyalty would run out, when ‘the other side is worse’ doesn't work anymore.”
Widespread disaffection “is here,” he warns.
MAGA, Glenn argues, isn’t just about Trump. It’s about commonsense policies and national strength.
“[Trump] was just the first major candidate that said, ‘You know, we're not done as a nation, and I'm not going to manage the decline.’ That's what people want,” he exclaims. “A healthy and commonsense-driven country that doesn't destroy their faith and their family and their freedoms.”
Glenn then turns his focus to conservative voters.
“When somebody like Tucker walks, when the next one walks (and there will be a next one), people are going to come and say, ‘Circle the wagons. You've got to defend the party.’ No ... don't rush to defend the GOP,” he entreats.
“Every time you defend them for free, they teach you that betrayal is survivable, that they can ignore you and keep you,” he continues. “The only language a comfortable incumbent understands is the sound of the door closing behind a voter who's done.”
This doesn’t mean we stop fighting the “authoritarian and crazy left.” We just have to “find the Republicans or whatever that stand for something,” he pleads.
Glenn pivots to Washington again: “You're not going to survive this. And I don't mean a tough cycle coming your way. I mean, you are building with your own hands a movement aimed directly at you, and you deserve it.”
No amount of spending or messaging will slow or divert the train that’s coming, he warns.
There is only one good way to stop the GOP exodus, says Glenn: “Simply remove the reason it exists.”
“And the only way to do that is to start listening to the people who sent you there and then actually do the thing they sent you to do. That's it. That's the secret in the sauce.”
To hear more, watch the video above.
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