Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend Brian was adamant. Writing to X Wednesday, the morning after Democrats smoked the Republicans in an election that was very clearly a rejection of President Donald Trump’s second term, Brian Glenn, an advocacy journalist for Real America’s Voice, wrote in big, capital letters for the world to see. 

“I AM YOUR SOURCE,” he shouted, as if miming the mannerisms of his 51-year-old girlfriend Marge. “MTG has NO plans to run for president in 2028.”

Well. That settles it then, right? Only one problem: I don’t believe him. Neither do many pundits and politicos who are already watching the race for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. Everything the Georgia firebrand has done these last few months suggests an interest in challenging the MAGA power structure for the top gig in ’28. 

Who can blame her? This is America. Here, coronations are the garish stuff of Lifetime movies. Tacky, boring, and cowardly, coronations are exactly how we got Joe Biden. How did that turn out? 

In truth, the crown should never simply be passed on. It should be fought over and earned. So, despite the former Trump hater and current Trump bestie Vice President J.D. Vance getting his ducks in a row, I’m not entirely sold on the idea that Vance has the clearest path to the nomination. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say the whole thing is lining up as a real battle royale featuring the likes of Vance, MTG, and Trump’s favorite second-term lackey: Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

It’s become clear that Trump really, really likes the man he once routinely mocked as “Little Marco.” Rubio is exactly the kind of toy Trump appreciates the most: a good boy who listens and obeys. The president made this abundantly clear on Wednesday, during a hastily-arranged meeting with Republican senators in Washington after Tuesday’s “blue bath,” during which the aging president fantasized about his ideal administration. 

“I want my Cabinet to be like Xi Jinping’s,” Trump told his legion of yes-men who play senators during waking hours. “I want them sitting up like that, nice and straight. I’ve never seen men so scared in their lives. J.D. doesn’t behave like that. He butts into conversations.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), perhaps the only man with a spine left in that room, uncomfortably sipped from his glass of water as Vance launched his head back the way he does when he wants everyone to know just how incredibly funny he thinks Trump, the man he once worried might be “America’s Hitler,” really is. That Trump! Always joking about how he wants a bunch of unquestioning, scared-out-of-their-minds goons to nod in agreement and clap along as he does another rambling rendition of the YMCA dance.

The moment between Trump and Vance may have seemed like another run-of-the-mill interaction between the president and a man who desperately wants to be president, but for astute observers the writing was clear to see—Vance will do anything if it gets him even an inch closer to Trump’s endorsement and the Republican nomination for president. There’s only one problem with that picture: Trump is in no rush to hand out his endorsement. 

“A lot of people want me to run, but… we have a strong bench,” Trump confessed during his primetime interview with the 60 Minutes host Norah O’Donnell last week. “I do like J.D. Vance, I like Marco Rubio, I like so many people. We have an unbelievable bench!”

In that non-answer was the real answer about whom Trump prefers in 2028—himself, of course. Steve Bannon, who is spending nearly every day on his War Room podcast shouting to the hills about how there is no MAGA without Trump and the Mar-a-Lago playboy should simply dare the courts to stop his attempts for a third term, surely hasn’t helped the situation. Never mind the fact that millions of American voters from New York to California just repudiated what is becoming a failed populist political movement—that’s just how Boomers are. They’ll clutch the steering wheel until the final breath or until some 34-year-old, as we just saw in New York City, rips it out of their cold, cold hands. 

Which is the major issue facing Vance. He isn’t really in the position to rip the steering wheel from Trump’s hands, is he? The whole reason J.D. won the job to begin with is that he looked and sounded and smiled like the type of Midwestern aw-shucks type who could go along and get along. 

Get along he has. Whenever Trump has failed the American people, whenever he has lied to the American people, whenever his best laid plans have blown up in his face, there has been J.D. to clean up the mess, defending Trump with all his might.

As J.D. works to put out Trump’s fires, MTG has gone in search of the real MAGA, correctly criticizing the Trump administration and the Republican Party at large for its inability to deliver on a bevy of Election Day promises. Her message is resonating, especially when she speaks bravely about the genocidal intentions of the Israeli government. Here is where she has found a hotbed of conservative support that could spell real trouble for Vance’s presidential aspirations if the two were to square off in a primary fight. J.D. knows it too.

Look no further than the vice president’s recent visit to Israel. He made a calculated decision not to appear at the Wailing Wall, but instead chose to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In a video posted to Vance’s X account, J.D. and his wife Usha prayed at the site believed to be Christ’s tomb. It was meant as a rebrand, a propagandizing of the next iteration of MAGA, the one that is ever so slightly less aligned with Israel. But Vance’s mere presence in the country provided essentially the same message on Israel that we’ve received from Republicans for the better part of a century. 

With the tentative ceasefire between Israel and the remnants of Hamas hanging in the balance, it is likely that the Republican Party’s relationship with Israel will require intraparty examination in the three short years leading to the next presidential election. The mess at the Heritage Foundation is evidence enough of this growing divide. If MTG does enter the race and continues to call the Gaza campaign a genocide, then Vance will be on the back foot and immediately fighting for a considerable voting bloc. In such a scenario, he will spend considerable political capital and energy defending his America First bona fides as MTG points out the failure of his administration to stop the killings, to release the Epstein Files, to end the wars, and, most importantly, to provide the sort of economic relief that was once at the core of Trump’s populist messaging.

So let us imagine, for one moment, that the year is 2027 and the primary fight is well underway. MTG is challenging Vance from the right and Rubio, because of course Rubio still wants it, is challenging Vance from the center. Trump, who has no interest in tarnishing his brand by picking a loser, is mostly sitting this one out, comfortably lounging through his Bidenesque beach era as the Bannonites beg him to challenge the Supreme Court for another term. The conservative media, many of whom have never fully bought into Trump or the MAGA movement, is publishing earnest essays about how Rubio is the sort of crafty statesman who can return the Republican Party to the sort of tax-centric wonkism of yesteryear. The picture is clear. 

If you think I’m exaggerating, consider Rep. Steve Scalise’s (R-LA) words at Thursday’s presser on Capitol Hill. 

“Ronald Reagan said it best: Freedom is only one generation away from extinction if we don’t fight to defend it,” Scalise said to nods from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and a host of Republican cheerleaders. “Those words of Reagan’s still ring true today.” The GOP still is, despite the Trump era, a party largely owned and dictated by cultural squares and tax nerds obsessed with Reagan’s legacy.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man: Marco Antonio Rubio. The 52-year-old Floridian looked destined for the top in 2016 before a parched mouth and the man on the golden escalator sank his fortunes.

It must not have been easy for Rubio to fall in line for Trump, a man who had made a fool of him for America and the whole world to see. But he did it. Rubio became a staunch defender of Trump’s first administration from the Senate, where he praised Trump’s decision to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria and later accused Democrats (without evidence) of rigging a close Florida Senate race. When Trump was criticized for his decision to host the 46th G7 Summit at the Trump National Doral Miami, Rubio, a native of the southern city, said it was a “great” choice that would spur on sales at local businesses. 

Most importantly, when President Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 Election, Rubio came to the 47th president’s defense, arguing there had been “irregularities” in the election and that Trump had every right to challenge the results. It all helps explain why, when Trump won a second term in 2024, he decided to elevate the senator from Florida to be the most important cabinet member, secretary of state. For the MAGA faithful, who have always questioned Rubio’s hawkish instincts, the selection of Rubio for such an important role was worrisome. For Trump, who has always prized abject fealty more than any other quality, Rubio was the perfect loyal mutt.

In the 11 months since Trump reassumed the Oval Office, Rubio has played an outsized role relative to all other members of the Trump team, including Vance. Rubio is so visibly in the catbird seat that there is open and rampant speculation that Trump may prefer Rubio to Vance in 2028, a notion that the president has done little to dispel when questioned by the press. That duty has fallen to Rubio, who has, interestingly enough, worked privately to tamp down suggestions that he may be eyeing a White House bid. 

“Marco has been very clear that J.D. is going to be the Republican nominee if he wants to be,” a person close to the secretary told POLITICO on Friday. “He will do anything he can just to support the vice president in that effort.” 

For Rubio, who has shown himself to be a cold, hard calculator, assuming the vice president’s seat on a Vance ticket makes a ton of sense. It would save both men from an uncomfortable primary season in which both their records, as loyal servants for Trump, would be picked apart first by one another and then potentially by Marge, the disappointed base, and finally the rabidly anti-MAGA press. Most of all, as noted in the POLITICO piece, it is simply the “expectation” at this point that J.D. will take the pilot’s seat with Rubio happily playing second fiddle. 

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But expectations are meant to be subverted, and nothing is more easily messed than the best-laid plans. In the event that MTG, who spent yesterday picking apart Trump’s second term during a friendly appearance on CNN, does enter the race, the idea of provenance and expectations will surely go straight out the window. Is Rubio so dedicated to Vance that he wouldn’t consider his chances in a three-way race where Rubio would suddenly play the moderating voice? America is growing increasingly weary of the bombastic Trump era, as evidenced by polls and Tuesday’s vicious Democratic sweep. Would Rubio not see the center lane opening wide before him? Would he not take it? 

The more MAGA fractures, and the more MTG courts its true populist core, the less tight Vance’s hold over its reins will be. In the event that two of MAGA’s superstars enter the ’28 primary, the “Youngkin voter” will command firm control of the party’s sway. And those voters, the tax wonks, tired and leery of YMCA shtick, eager to correct the party’s alignment, will clap like seals if Rubio takes his shot at glory again. 

If MTG enters the race, and battles Vance for the MAGA wing of the electorate, it’s Rubio—if he wants it.