Trump Knows He Can’t Run Again. But He’s Got Another Problem.

The race to replace Donald Trump is on, but no one seems particularly keen on his successor.

Despite his supporters openly encouraging him to ignore the Constitution, Trump has reportedly told his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles “a couple of times” that he knows a third term isn’t possible. And that leaves many in MAGA looking for what comes next.

Turning Point USA, the organization that energized young voters to turn out for Trump, has recently reoriented its focus on Vice President JD Vance ahead of the 2028 election. Vance, according to the Charlie Kirk-founded conservative nonprofit, has the chops to take Trump’s spot on the next Republican presidential ticket. There’s just one glaring flaw: No one seems to like him.

A CNN poll conducted earlier this month found that just 22 percent of Republicans support Vance’s bid for the presidency. They cited his “intelligence” as a key factor in his potential success with American voters, as well as the likelihood that he would continue Trump’s agenda.

The president’s suggestions as to who could top the Republican presidential ticket in 2028 have been so quiet that they’re practically murmurs. Without ever explicitly signaling his support for Vance to lead the party, Trump has lauded his number two, publicly describing Vance as “very capable” and the “most likely” choice to front the Republican ticket.

Vance has not yet announced a formal bid for the Oval Office, but that hasn’t stopped major Republicans from chiming in with their support. State Secretary Marco Rubio told Vanity Fair that he would back Vance rather than challenge him for the next GOP presidential nomination, while Representative Anna Paulina Luna has also shown her support for the 41-year-old Ohioan.

Turning Point’s new leader and Kirk’s partying, gold suit–wearing widow Erika Kirk made waves with her own support for the vice president after she intimately embraced him on stage in October, weeks after her husband’s assassination.

Erika Kirk and Turning Point formally endorsed Vance for president at the group’s conference earlier this month, pledging to help get him elected.

Somehow, Vance is the best that the party’s got—as of right now. No other GOP figure, including longtime presidential wannabes State Secretary Marco Rubio and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, eclipsed five percent in the CNN poll.

The largest group of respondents—some 64 percent of those polled—said they had “no one specific in mind” to top the 2028 ticket, suggesting an open playing field in which just about anyone could step in to win the Republican nomination.

Still, several of Trump’s most ardent supporters—including his first term chief strategist Steve Bannon—have advocated that the president should attempt to seek a third term. Vance, Bannon claimed in August, is simply “not tough enough” for the job.

Russia has apparently not agreed to a ceasefire, according to Donald Trump.

The U.S. president told reporters Sunday that Ukraine’s near-term peace prospects with Russia did not include an end to the violence.

“Did [Russian President Vladimir] Putin agree to a ceasefire to allow a referendum to take place?” a journalist asked Trump Sunday evening during a Palm Beach press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“Not a ceasefire, and that’s one of the points that we’re working on right now,” Trump said. “He feels that look, you know, they’re fighting and to stop—and then if they have to start again, which is a possibility, he doesn’t want to be in that position. I understand that position. The president feels strongly about that, or something.”

“You know you have to understand the other side,” Trump insisted, speaking of the Russian dictator while just steps away from Zelenskiy. “I’m on the side of peace, I’m on the side of stopping the war.”

The detail adds to a growing pile of evidence that Russia isn’t negotiating in good faith to end its assault on Ukraine. The hostile foreign power has offered virtually nothing—not even temporary peace—to resolve the nearly four-year conflict. Yet it has been gifted unprecedented capitulations from the Trump administration, upending longstanding U.S. policy in the process.

Last month, the Trump administration unveiled a 28-point peace plan that catered to some of Russia’s most outrageous demands, such as requiring Ukraine to swear off NATO membership and to hand Moscow Crimea and the eastern Donbas region.

Still, Ukraine is pushing toward a resolution. In the weeks since Trump unveiled his plan, Zelenskiy and his team have drafted their own version of a peace plan, which he told reporters Sunday was “90 percent agreed to,” noting that the U.S.-Ukraine security guarantees were “100 percent agreed” to.

The sensitive issue of ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia, however, was still up in the air.

“I would not say agreed, but we’re getting closer to an agreement on that, and that’s a big issue. Certainly, that’s one of the big issues, and … it’s unresolved,” Trump said Sunday.

More than 13,300 civilians have been killed and 31,700 injured in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a United Nations report from June. Last week, Russia bombed Kyiv, devastating portions of Ukraine’s war-torn capital and killing at least one person while injuring 27.

Trump pledged on the campaign trail that he would end the war on his first day in office, but still the conflict has dragged on, in large part due to Moscow’s tireless and ever-shifting demands. On Sunday, Trump told reporters that he has “no deadline” to resolve the war.

By Monday morning, Russian officials suggested that Moscow’s position could change yet again as they accused Ukrainian forces of attempting to attack Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region.

President Trump is claiming to have successfully bombed a “big facility” in Venezuela in yet another act of aggression and sign of the administration’s interventionist goals in the region. 

“We just knocked out—I don’t know if you read or you saw—they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump told GOP donor John Catsimatidis on his Friday radio show.

A staffer close to the situation later described the target as a “drug facility.” And while details remain virtually nonexistent (how do we know this even happened?), the attack does align with the administration’s unsubstantiated narrative that the Venezuelan government is directly supporting drug traffickers. 

This is a major, violent escalation against Venezuela with absolutely zero explanation or justification to the American people. The so-called  “peace president” has bombed ships full of fishermen, stolen an oil tanker, threatened Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with regime change, and even given the CIA the greenlight to meddle there.

The Venezuelan government has yet to respond. 

Rogue MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says President Trump told her not to identify Jeffrey Epstein’s client list because his “friends” would be upset.

“My friends will get hurt,” the president told Greene, according to a New York Times Magazine interview published Monday. Trump called up the Georgia representative after she promised to identify the abusers in a September congressional hearing. One of MTG’s staffers added that Trump yelled at the congresswoman so loud that everyone in her office could hear it.

Trump also attacked the victims Greene was fighting for, so she turned to fellow Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who were able to successfully force the administration to begin to release some heavily redacted files with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“How did all of this end up to a point where it was about releasing files about women who were raped, and not the serious things that I think truly matter about helping to get our economy stabilized again?” she said. “Help reduce the cost of living, fix the housing market, fix health insurance—for the love of God, what the [expletive] is the matter with these people?”

Greene has made her distaste with Trump’s policymaking known, from Epstein, to endless war, to affordability. Her split with Trump is just one of many rifts within the GOP that will likely evolve as this second term drags on.

The president had yet another strange mark on his hands over Christmas, once again raising concerns that his health is not what he has claimed it to be.

Donald Trump—the oldest person to ever be elected president—was photographed with what appeared to be another bruise on Christmas Eve, this time marring his left hand.

The 79-year-old has repeatedly claimed that he is in pristine condition, brushing off public alarm over his deteriorating body.

Trump’s health has been a topic of concern since he was on the campaign trail, when reports circulated that he couldn’t remember the contents of cognitive exams he claimed to ace. Since then, the president has regularly been spotted with odd discolorations on his right hand.

He also routinely appears discombobulated and lethargic during critical meetings with world leaders. Over the course of the last year, Trump has fallen asleep roughly a dozen times during critical public appearances. It’s happened during Cabinet meetings, in the middle of bombastic military parades, while meeting leaders of critical allies, and even during the Pope’s funeral.

Concern only continued to grow when Trump appeared for 9/11 ceremonies in September with a sagging mouth and drooping expression, which some onlookers suggested could be a result of a stroke.

The following month, the president received MRI scans at Walter Reed Medical Center. Those tests are used by doctors to assess tumors, joint injuries, or heart conditions. At least one former White House physician questioned the timeline of Trump’s appointment, pointing out that his four-hour visit to the hospital was far longer than would be required by an MRI test. Nonetheless, Trump said the tests came back “perfect.”

Virtually no other topic—besides the Epstein files—irks Trump more, according to his advisers. Earlier this month, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s public appeal for the release of Trump’s medical records incited a wave of fury from the president. After Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that it was “OK with me” to release the MRI results, he took to Truth Social to accuse the one-time vice presidential candidate of being “incompetent.”

The MRI results, according to the White House physician, allegedly illustrated that Trump is “perfectly normal.”

Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie K. Brown—whose 2018 reporting essentially reopened the Jeffrey Epstein case—wants to know why her flight information is in the Epstein files. 

“Does somebody at the DOJ want to tell me why my American Airlines booking information and flights in July 2019 are part of the Epstein files (attached to a grand jury subpoena)?” she wrote Sunday on X. “As the flight itinerary includes my maiden name (and I did book this flight) why was the DOJ monitoring me?”

“I expected my name to be in the Epstein files, since the Miami Herald published the series ‘Perversion of Justice,’” Brown continued on her Substack. “But what I didn’t expect to see was an American Airlines flight record from 2019 with my full name on them, including my maiden name, which I don’t use professionally. It’s an unusual name, so it’s clear it’s me.” 

The released flight logs occurred during the first Trump administration, around the time of Epstein’s arrest, which begs the question: Why were they following the reporter who was instrumental in putting Epstein’s crimes back in the public eye?

If there’s more to this, then Brown may have another book to write.  

The Department of Homeland Security’s tasteless holiday shitposting may have just violated the United States Constitution.

The federal agency’s official X account published multiple posts Thursday that appeared to violate the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government actions that favor one religion over another.

“Rejoice America, Christ is born!” read one post containing a video montage of snowy scenery complete with a choir singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

“Merry Christmas, America. We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior,” read another post.

The post also included a video montage that was clearly meant to evoke nostalgia, but it was more off-putting than anything else. The video featured archival footage of Donald Trump spliced into clips from popular holiday movies. It even included a photograph of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem holding a Christmas tree in Chicago, where she launched a deadly large-scale immigration operation, to really put the eerie in cheery.

Increasingly, it seems the Trump administration views the separation between church and state as merely a suggestion.

It’s fitting that DHS would be the source of this blatant violation, as Noem’s ethnic cleansing approach to homeland security is transparently rooted in xenophobia and Christian nationalism. And the president has continually leaned into Christian nationalist rhetoric in order to please his conservative base.

“They say separation between church and state … I said, ‘All right, let’s forget about that for one time,’” Trump said earlier this spring during a National Prayer Day event.

DHS also did its fair share of disgusting holiday posting that didn’t violate the Constitution. One post referring to “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” read: “This Christmas, our hearts grow as the illegal population shrinks.” But the Trump administration’s continued efforts to tear apart families and communities demonstrates just the opposite.

Representative Thomas Massie torched Donald Trump’s pathetic swipe at him in his outrageous Christmas post. 

The president posted a special Christmas message Thursday addressed to “the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein,” and congratulated himself for “dropping” the convicted sex offender “long before it was fashionable to do so.” 

“When their names get brought out in an ongoing Radical Left Witch Hunt (plus one lowlife ‘Republican,’ Massie!) and it is revealed that they are Democrats all, there will be a lot of explaining to do,” Trump wrote. 

Massie, who was the only Republican who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law compelling the Department of Justice to release every unclassified document from its investigations into Epstein, hit back at the president’s barb.  

“Merry Christmas to you too Mr. President,” Massie  wrote. “So… I’ve teamed up with radical left democrats to expose… Democrats. This 4D chess is fun!”

“What a novel idea to put country before party,” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, who introduced the original bill, replied on X. 

Massie continued to mock Trump on Friday for taking time out of his holiday to complain about him. “Imagine celebrating a blessed Christmas with your family… suddenly phones alert everyone to the most powerful man in the world attacking you… for fulfilling his campaign promise to help victims!” Massie wrote from his campaign’s X account. 

President Trump is holding two emergency summits next week at his Mar-a-Lago estate—first with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and then with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—in a supposed effort to stop two wars he’s failed to end.

Axios reports that Trump will host Zelenskiy on Sunday and Netanyahu on Monday.

Trump has been claiming he is “close” to a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine for almost a year—an embarrassing development for a war he claimed he could end on his first day in office. The Ukrainian president has said that a peace deal is “90 percent ready.” Only time—and the Kremlin—will tell.

Meanwhile, Trump has been at a fork in the road in Gaza for two months, as Israel both continues to violate the ceasefire and plans to carry on its occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the region.

“We are deep in Gaza, and we will never leave Gaza. We are there to defend, to prevent what happened. We are standing, as we said,” Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said just days ago. “We trust the rock of Israel and the IDF in defending Israel in a fierce battle between jihadist enemies of this kind and Israeli enemies of this kind.” It’s hard to picture Netanyahu doing anything to push back on that threat.

Either way, it’s clear that the man who campaigned for his own Nobel Peace Prize is scrambling to end the two major international conflicts that have plagued his second term so far.

A survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse torched President Donald Trump’s outrageous message on the alleged sex trafficker.

Trump, who reportedly had an intimate friendship with Epstein, posted a special Christmas message Thursday addressed to “the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to ‘drop him like a dog’ when things got too HOT.”

Trump congratulated himself for “dropping” the convicted sex offender “long before it was fashionable to do so.”

But Marijke Chartouni, who has said she was sexually abused by Epstein when she was 20 years old, didn’t buy Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the convicted sex offender.

“Every accusation is a confession. Cheers,” she wrote on X.

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