Erika Kirk says Turning Point will throw weight on JD Vance in 2028 presidential campaign
Erika Kirk, who has become the leader of the organization Turning Point USA after the murder of her husband Charlie Kirk in September, said that the group will work to have Vice President JD Vance elected as president in 2028.
“We’re going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for an amazing 48 years,” Kirk said Thursday at the annual Turning Point, USA youth conference in Phoenix, Ariz., referring to what will be the 48th US president.
Vance was a regular guest on Charlie Kirk’s podcast, and Kirk campaigned for Vance in his 2022 US Senate run for Ohio. After Kirk was killed in September, Vance said the roots of their friendship began in 2017, as Vance made the rounds to promote his well-received memoir. Hillbilly Elegy.
Since Kirk was shot and killed on Sept. 10 at an event on the Utah university campus, Vance has hosted Kirk’s podcast and made a Turning Point stop at the University of Mississippi.
“If it wasn’t for Charlie Kirk, I wouldn’t be vice president of the United States,” Vance said at Kirk’s memorial on September 15. In the same speech, Vance said they “tried to silence my friend,” although no physical evidence has emerged at this point that the 22-year-old suspect in Kirk’s shooting was with them.
Although Erika Kirk, 37, has expressed an endorsement of Vance in recent weeks, it’s unusual considering the presidential election is three years away.
Vance focuses on intermediate terms
Charlie Kirk, 31 at the time of his death, gained attention as a high school student after he contributed an article to the right-wing Breitbart News. Soon after, Republican-leaning businessmen including Foster Friess and Bill Montgomery, both since deceased, helped fund a youth-oriented organization led by Kirk.
Kirk then spoke at the next three Republican national conventions, all of which endorsed Trump for president. The alliance was financially beneficial to both Turning Point and Kirks, the Associated Press reported in 2024.
Erika Kirk vowed to continue the group’s work after the death of her husband, the father of their two children. He was unanimously selected as Turning Point’s next leader by the organization’s board.
In his speech on Thursday, he said the party will work again to ensure that “the President [Donald] Trump has the entire Congress for four years,” referring to the middle of next year.
Trump, aware that the president’s party often fares badly in the upcoming midterm elections, has pressured several Republican-led states to draw new maps to benefit the party.
United States Vice President JD Vance said MAGA organizer and Trump ally Charlie Kirk built the organization and ‘changed the face of conservatism in our time, and in doing so, changed the course of American history.’
Vance, in turn, said he is focused on the midterms of next year and will speak with Trump sometime after that date about the possibilities for the 2028 presidential campaign.
“I can imagine what that period might look like after the midterm elections,” Vance told Fox News’ Sean Hannity last month.
Republican vice presidents have received the presidential nomination several times in the past, but none since George HW Bush in 1988. Mike Pence ran a short campaign for president that was revolutionary in 2024, as he was envisioned. invalid person with many grassroots MAGA supporters in disbelief that he has the power to block the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
Vance will offer a diverse background as a candidate – a veteran of the US, a graduate of Yale Law School and a former capitalist – but his two-year term in the Senate was impressive in principle. In his first year as vice president, he has fared well but seems to have operated without a specific policy portfolio, unlike recent VPs like Biden, Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney.
Trump mocks the fourth runner-up, and talks to Vance, Rubio
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and has been the subject of media speculation in 2028. But in a two-part Vanity Fair digital article that drew blunt and critical commentary from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Rubio reportedly indicated that Vance would influence his decision on whether to run.
“If JD Vance runs for president, he will be his nominee, and I will be one of the first people to support him,” Rubio reportedly told reporter Chris Whipple of Vanity Fair.
Trump, on Air Force One with Rubio standing next to him, took both of these “heroic” men in late October.
“I’m not sure if anyone can compete with those two,” Trump told reporters.
“I think if they can form a party, it will be unstoppable,” the president said, appearing to speculate on a presidential ticket that includes Trump administration officials.
The president made those comments as he sold “Trump 2028” merchandise and teased the possibility of another president, at one point saying he “would love to do it.” A number of polls have shown that Trump’s approval rating is close to a record, and he will be 82 years old at the end of his current term.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was serving his fourth term as president when he died in 1945, the 22nd Amendment struck for the next decade saying “no person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice.”
Steve Bannon — Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and Trump’s 2017 White House adviser — told The Economist in a recent interview that he doesn’t believe the amendment is ironclad.
“At the right time, we will lay out what the plan is, but there is a plan,” Bannon said of the possibility of another Trump run.
‘I was going to beat him up’: Ocasio-Cortez
In theory, there would be nothing to prevent the president from being nominated as vice president by the next nominee and having influence. Trump dismissed that idea to reporters in October as “very good.”
“I think people are not going to like that,” Trump said. “It’s great. It couldn’t be better.”
Polling has already taken place on similar considerations that exclude Trump, including by polling group Verasight. In a survey of more than 1,500 Americans in Argument magazine, Verasight ranked the Democratic House representative.
“Listen, these polls, they’re like three years out, you know, they are what they are,” Ocasio-Cortez told a reporter when asked about the polls.
“But let the record show, I’m going to beat him,” Ocasio-Cortez said with a laugh.
Ocasio-Cortez, like Vance, has never officially announced any plans for a presidential campaign.
