Trump Has Reportedly Settled on His 2028 Successor

President Trump wants Vice President JD Vance to succeed him. 

Axios reports that the president is happy with how Vance has handled his position, from TV appearances to public remarks, and consistently talks up the former Ohio senator to his inner circle to the detriment of another prospective heir, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

“POTUS isn’t asking, ‘JD or Marco?’ anymore,” an unnamed source told the publication. “He’s no longer asking, ‘How’s JD doing?’ He’s now saying, ‘JD looks great, right?’”

A senior Trump adviser told Axios that “JD is earning it, and Trump sees it,” adding that Rubio “wasn’t planning to run [for president in 2028] anyway, and he’d be even less likely to do so now.”

A pivotal event for Trump’s positive opinion of Vance came after he worked with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to reach a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Iran, which has brought momentary peace. Vance benefited from positive media attention over his role in the negotiations while at the same time beginning a media tour to promote his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.

Vance’s 33 TV appearances impressed Trump, who has a fixation with the medium, and even though Trump hates many of the shows on which Vance appeared, particularly ABC’s The View, he was impressed with the video clips circulating from those appearances. 

Vance has raised $70 million for the Republican National Committee, and he’d rely on the organization if he ends up running for president. He’s still very unpopular with the American people, just like Trump, but is almost as popular among Republicans as the president, with a 62 percent favorability rating as opposed to Trump’s 65 percent. Early 2028 polls also have him leading the Republican field nationally and in pivotal states like New Hampshire.  

Still, pro-Israel conservatives have soured on Vance in recent months after he criticized the country’s leaders for denouncing the MOU with Iran, and on Saturday, the head of the conservative, pro-business Club for Growth, David McIntosh, said on X that Vance didn’t understand the importance of free markets.

Even if he overcomes all of that to get the 2028 Republican nomination for president, Vance faces an uphill battle to take Trump’s place in the White House. His book has been poorly received and reviewed, and Trump has saddled him and the Republican Party with record unpopularity with everyone who isn’t in the MAGA faithful. As 2028 approaches, it will be interesting to see if Vance tries to attach himself to Trump, or tries to create some distance, to better his own political prospects. 

President Donald Trump had a humiliating outburst during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the White House in February 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.  

The two world leaders attempted to dial in to a video call led by then–Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada—but Trump became frustrated by a technical issue that prevented him from speaking. In response, he lobbed the tablet he was using over the Resolute Desk and onto the floor, an official told the Journal.

This incident was part of an expansive Journal report detailing the crumbling relationship between the United States and Europe—and Trump’s outburst in front of Macron was only the beginning. The president has continued to escalate feuds with European leaders, give hall passes to their enemies, and make deranged demands to seize their territory. 

This also isn’t the first time one of Trump’s temper tantrums has turned violent. 

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, previously testified to Trump’s lunatic behavior behind the scenes. 

In December 2020, Trump launched his lunch at the wall after Attorney General William Barr denied the president’s claims of widespread voter fraud, according to Hutchinson. 

On January 6, 2021, when Trump was told it wasn’t safe to go to the Capitol, the wild-eyed president tried to take the wheel of his car. When a Secret Service agent attempted to hold him back, the president tried to grab an agent just below the neck, Hutchinson testified to Congress. 

President Trump openly admitted to World Cup corruption while explaining how he got FIFA to rescind Team USA star Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension—the first time the soccer organization has done so since 1962. 

Balogun was initially supposed to be suspended from playing in Monday’s Round of 16 match against Belgium after receiving a red card for a tackle against Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemović last week. FIFA stated that teams are unable to appeal red cards, which keep a player out of the following game. Nevertheless, Balogun will be playing on Monday after Trump’s call with FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Belgium has challenged the decision at the time of this writing, but no update has been made. 

“Can you describe your phone call with Gianni Infantino about the red card?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House on Monday morning. 

“You’re asking me about the whole soccer thing? Yeah, I did, I spoke to Gianni, who’s highly respected, who’s produced the most successful World Cup in history by, they say, four times.… So I saw the play. And I’m a person that loves sports, was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well. Really well. And that wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction,” Trump replied. “That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other. You can’t take your foot and properly place it on somebody else’s foot—these were two great athletes that got tangled up. And this referee, who is a little bit suspect, if you check his past … he made a call that nobody could believe, even people on the other side.” 

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s our best player, or one of our best players … and [the referee] gave him a red card. Then I started hearing that means he can’t play in the next game.… When they take your best player … and they say you can’t play? That’s very unfair,” Trump continued. “So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.… I’m the one that got them to [rescind the suspension]. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep.” 

“All I did, all I did, I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul. And, you know, again, I’m good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul.” 

Trump was later asked about the Belgian response, and if he would speak to the country’s prime minister before the game. 

“The people in Belgium—if they win the game, they can be very proud. If they win the game with a player missing, it would have been a different feeling. You can’t do that, and I’m very glad. All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, “You have to do this,” he said. “This man is a smart, tough man, Gianni Infantino. He’s a smart, tough man, and his stock has gone through the roof.… I fear we have to have all the best players on the field.”

The decision has been met with protest from fans, the Royal Belgian Football Association, or RBFA, and even UEFA, the governing body of European soccer. 

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” UEFA said in a statement. “Equally, such a decision creates a precedent in the ongoing tournament, where similar situations will now require an equal treatment, to the detriment of the competition.… “We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision.”

Balogun’s tackle was certainly a foul. And even if you don’t agree that it should have been a red card, it is undeniable that the president of a country pressuring the FIFA president to go against a rule it hasn’t broken in 64 years is a baseline example of political corruption in sports. Infantino and Trump already have a questionable relationship, as the former’s gifting of the  “FIFA Peace Prize” to Trump raised conflict-of-interest questions that have now only grown louder. 

“Decisions on sporting rules and sporting matters belong to sporting bodies, not politicians. Influencing sporting decisions would undermine the autonomy of sport,” European Commissioner for Fairness Glenn Micallef wrote on X. “Our focus should instead be on the real governance challenges facing sport, including the weaponisation of sport for political purposes.” 

All’s fair in love and Trumpworld.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer turned political defector, is reportedly back on good terms with the president, according to the New York Post.

Cohen had served as a personal attorney to Trump for more than a decade before he became the middleman in Trump’s hush-money fiasco with porn star Stormy Daniels. To save himself, Cohen testified in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial, divulging that the real estate tycoon had directed him to pay Daniels ahead of the 2016 election in order to quell reports that Trump had had an extramarital affair with the adult film star circa 2006.

The hush-money trial ultimately found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, but the bad blood between Cohen and Trump is apparently history.

Cohen, as of this past weekend, has landed a new gig at 770 WABC radio—with the president’s blessing.

Cohen told the Post that the new gig will be “completely liberating” and give him an “unfiltered pipeline to the people.”

“I’m moving my 1.5 million followers from my podcasts, YouTube, and Substack over to this new platform, and it’s an absolute rush to have a space where I can give them the plain, unvarnished truth,” Cohen said on Sunday, noting that “after everything I’ve been through, I know exactly what BS smells like, and I’m here to call it out every single day.

“I’m here to use my past and my insider knowledge to pull back the curtain and set the record straight for them,” Cohen told the Post.

WABC owner and major Trump supporter John Catsimidatidis told the Post that Cohen and Trump had made amends.

“I checked with the White House and they had no objection,” Catsimatidis said. “I understand everything is fine.”

Cohen is expected to take over the Sunday slot from Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced ex-governor of New York, though Cohen is reportedly vying for a regular, five-days-a-week show. His voice will be heard on the conservative talk radio station beginning July 12.

“I was told the president gave me a glowing recommendation for this gig because he believes I’m going to be the next Rush Limbaugh,” Cohen said.

President Donald Trump is sitting on a more than $350 million war chest, but Republicans are starting to feel shortchanged, Politico reported Monday.

MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, hasn’t spent directly on a race since March, when it spent $17,900 to back Georgia Representative Clay Fuller’s campaign. Since then, MAGA Inc. has only given $560,000 to MAGA KY, which used it to back Ed Gallrein’s challenge against Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Trump has openly mocked mounting concerns about affordability, and actively downplayed Republicans’ efforts to address it. Now, Republicans are frustrated that the president hasn’t spent a dime to convince voters that his party actually cares about them.

“We didn’t leave our most powerful missiles on the ships when we were trying to crush Iran. Money is the political equivalent in politics,” a GOP lobbyist and donor told Politico. “The electorate’s mindset on the economy is normally locked in stone by Labor Day after a summer of backyard conversations and paying for summer vacation gas.

“Now is the time to sell the message—America 250, the world loves America, the Democrats are crazy left again, and we sealed the border,” the lobbyist added.

Matthew Bartlett, Republican strategist and former Trump appointee to the State Department in the first administration, wasn’t optimistic that help was on the way.

“What makes you think they’re going to spend? We’ve been waiting for the cavalry,” Bartlett told Politico. “Every day matters about shaping sentiment and ideas, and when you have limited time, you should be attacking that early. So the notion of waiting is just inherently concerning … but even more of like, are you even actually going to be playing?”

Beyond sorely neglecting Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections, in some cases, Trump has actively undermined them.