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J.D. Vance leak just changed everything (this is big)

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by Frank Holmes, reporter

Today is Marco Rubio’s 55th birthday, and he might have gotten the greatest present in history: a clear path to the White House.

Figures inside the Trump administration are telling the media that current front-runner J.D. Vance is considering calling off his 2028 presidential campaign. And they say President Donald Trump has left his own vice president out in the cold.

“Vance is a non-event in the West Wing,” an unnamed figure close to President Donald Trump told The Daily Mail. “(Secretary of State Marco) Rubio has more mojo than Vance. The president listens to him. Vance is out of step and has been for a long time.”

The story, which appears to rely on a single anonymous source, says Vance feels isolated as the only member of the administration not gung-ho about Operation Epic Fury. Vance has allegedly found himself increasingly on the margins after the resignation of fellow doves Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent.

That has only intensified since the Trump administration put a big, fat bullseye on less hawkish members of the Republican Party like Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

As the Iran war sends gas prices skyrocketing and touches off fresh rounds of inflation, the source said Vance may not want to “own everything that’s gone on in the last couple of years.”

Ironically, if the president had listened to Vance, the vice president might not be thinking about skipping the 2028 election.

There’s no doubt the consequences of the Iran war spell trouble for Republicans in November’s midterms. Americans disapprove of the way President Trump is handling on the economy and the rising cost of living by two- or three-to-one.

But would it doom the 2028 candidate against the Democrats’ weak presidential bench?

Vance’s team immediately pushed back on the effort.

“This story is just a flimsy compilation of completely illegitimate sources who have no idea what they’re talking about,” another anonymous source on Vance’s team told the newspaper. “Anyone who wants to be a viable nominee for president has a very small window. And if you don’t go when that window is open, most likely it never opens up again.”

Some online commentators even joked that Marco Rubio personally wrote the story. But Vance and Rubio don’t appear to have any real animosity toward one another and, by all reports, work together well in the White House.

Instead, there may be something much deeper at work.

MAGA sources say the whisper campaign may be a charade by the GOP’s outsted kingmakers—especially the ones tied to the Bush dynasty.

The Horn told you four years ago how Jeb Bush personally tried to squeeze President Trump out of the 2024 presidential race.

As The Horn told you in March that GOP’s elitist donors have been promoting a “Draft Rubio” scheme.

“The GOP’s big money people don’t want Vice President J.D. Vance, a populist who spent time on Wall Street but maintained his ties to forgotten American communities like the Ohio hometown he memorialized in Hillbilly Elegy,” this column wrote at the time.

It’s obvious why the Republican megadonors would like to sideline Vance for Rubio, a former sidekick ofJeb Bush and a sponsor of the “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan for illegal aliens.

As we told you, reports suggest the Bush family has a plan to reclaim control of the Republican Party after President Trump’s term ends—and elbowing Vance aside is step one.

In recent weeks, the Bush dynasty’s figures have been dumping on Vance.

Vance has a “Kamala Harris problem,” said David Kochel, a former advicer to Jeb Bush’s failed Iowa caucus campaign.

National Review, which dedicated an entire issue in 2016 to opposing President Trump, just ran an editorial titled “The Case for JD Vance to Wait.”

The anti-Vance media campaign is also suspicious, because it repeats Democratic talking points.

When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Pete Buttigieg if Vance would “be a formidable opponent in 2028,” Buttigieg shot him down. “There has been a bit of a stink” around “J.D. Vance politically. He tends not to be very successful when he’s out campaigning for people,”  said Buttigieg, who has never campaigned successfully for any office outside South Bend, Indiana.

But if President Trump has really turned his back on Vance, it doesn’t show. The president pushed back against claims  Vance as recently as May 20.

Reportedly, California Governor Gavin Newsom said Vance does not have what it takes to top the ticket in 2028. Trump disagreed completely.

“J.D. is very talented. He’s a smart guy. He’ll do very well” in 2028 “if it’s J.D.,” President Trump told The Daily Wire.

“We have a lot of very talented people,” he added quickly. And Trump said he hoped his legacy would benefit the next Republican candidate.

“Hopefully, we’re going to leave something that is real easy to run.”

Rubio boosters point to a recent poll they say show Vance running out of steam.

Vance leads Rubio by just one point among likely Republican voters in a poll released this week. “It looks like a two-horse race when before, Vance really was running away with it,” stated Emerson College Polling Director Spencer Kimball.

Rubios supporters are also hyping the fact that the Secretary of State also holds a tiny, two-point lead over Vance among users of the betting app Kalshi.

But other polls from this month show Vance leading Rubio by as much as 26 points, and Vance blows Rubio away in the RealClear Polls average, 39 to 23 points.

“Vance’s 35 percent approval rating was also marginally higher than the other Trump officials, including Rubio’s,” noted Politico.

If Rubio decides to run against Vance in two years’ time, he won’t be alone. This column has kept you informed of about Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential ambitions and Florida Governor Ron Desantis’ long-simmering feud with Trump.

What’s really going on with this announcement?

It sounds like Democrats and the rejected Bush-family Republicans are whistling past the graveyard.

Vance is a smooth political operator who runs circles around Democrats in debates. He has a real-life story of rising from poverty to the heights of American achievement—on the country’s 250th birthday, no less. And he’s only 41 years old, allowing him to set the Republican Party’s course for decades to come.

No one is interested in giving the party back to the Bush family or its supporters.

The Democrats and RINOs can only hope to bully Vance into retirement, before they try to wage lawfare against him, like they did Donald Trump.

There’s no doubt Vance is running, and the battle will be fierce.

About the Author

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”