Conventional wisdom suggests that the 2028 Republican primary is shaping up to be a chaotic affair. Supposedly, it’s anyone’s game, as Vice President JD Vance is weaker than he appears, while potential adversaries, including Marco Rubio, are gaining an advantage.

This view is untethered from reality. The fact is that the 2028 Republican nomination is Vance’s to lose. The faulty prevailing opinion has calcified for two reasons: a poor reading of history and a deficient understanding of the political landscape.

JD Vance has had one of the fastest rises to the executive branch in modern American political history.

“George H.W. Bush is the only sitting vice president in the last 190 years (since 1836) to be elected president,” an MS Now analyst recently wrote. He is not alone: the “190 years” number has been trotted out by those who contend that Vance stands little chance of winning the presidency in 2028.

On its face, this line of argument should be ignored because comparing the politics of 1840s America to the present is a fool’s errand: The country has changed significantly in that time, as has the party system.

Looking to history

But even if one disregards this, another historical fact emerges: For much of American history, the vice presidency wasn’t “worth a bucket of warm piss,” to borrow an infamous line from Vice President John Nance Garner. It was mostly used to balance a presidential ticket geographically and had little power on its own, as the office was typically a capstone to one’s career rather than a stepping stone to the presidency.

Particularly ambitious politicians instead sought the position of secretary of state, which often acted as the president’s chief adviser. Every commander in chief from Thomas Jefferson through John Quincy Adams served as secretary of state, as did Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, and a host of individuals who lost the presidency.

Andrew Jackson broke this mold by picking Van Buren, his ideological successor, to be his vice president, as Jackson was specifically seeking to undertake a long-term political revolution. He was the only president to select his second-in-command for such a purpose — that is, until Donald Trump picked JD Vance.

Since Van Buren won the presidency in 1836, only three incumbent vice presidents sought to succeed a two-term president of their own party: Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Al Gore. Nixon and Gore lost razor-close contests. Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and would likely have been president had the infamous butterfly ballot not confused a few thousand voters in liberal Palm Beach County into voting for arch-conservative Pat Buchanan.

Out of the remaining incumbent vice presidents who ran, two did so after one-term presidents suddenly dropped out — Hubert Humphrey after Lyndon Johnson and Kamala Harris after Joe Biden — and were therefore forced to run abbreviated campaigns. The third, John Breckinridge, ran in the four-way 1860 election in which his party was split in two, a situation that’s not analogous to today. The final incumbent vice president, John Adams, ran after George Washington and won, but he did so under an entirely different electoral system.

The tally of incumbent vice presidents running after a two-termer of their same party is two large wins (Van Buren and Bush) and two incredibly narrow losses (Nixon and Gore). The wins tally jumps to three if Adams is included.

This is hardly a reason for Vance to be concerned with history being a hindrance to his hopes of winning the White House. Plus, neither Nixon nor Gore was running as specific ideological inheritors of their respective presidents’ legacies. Gore arguably ran away from Bill Clinton, while Van Buren and Bush were successors — and they both won.

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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Ahead of the pack

“It’s anybody’s to win” is a second piece of conventional wisdom stated without evidence. Polling on the GOP 2028 nomination so far reveals an indisputable picture: Vance is dominating his competition. The RealClearPolitics average has him at around 40% — which is 20% ahead of his nearest competitor. A recent Echelon poll had Vance similarly ahead, as have a bevy of others.

Only a recent Atlas poll shows Marco Rubio leading Vance. But there are numerous reasons to question that poll, from the sudden massive swing to Rubio to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leading the pack among Democrats.

In the Trump era, political analysts have grown accustomed to one man dominating the Republican Party’s primary contests. But Vance’s dominance two years out is also historically stronger than most previous nominees not named Trump.

In 1986, although George H.W. Bush was leading, he was stuck at 29%, in front of Senator Howard Baker by only 13%. In 1998, his son George W. Bush led with 30%, only 16% ahead of Elizabeth Dole, who had not yet been elected senator. Other than Trump, no Republican has so clearly led the field in the history of modern presidential primary elections — and Vance has done this without a definitive Trump endorsement, which would likely send his numbers even higher.

Then there are Vance’s prospective challengers. Though Secretary of State Marco Rubio often places second, the secretary has repeatedly ruled out running against Vance, saying at one point, “If JD Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him.” The specificity of Rubio’s statements, seen with his and Vance’s repeated expressions of praise for each other, would make any Rubio candidacy extraordinarily difficult.

Running now would destroy Rubio’s relationship with Vance and his wing of the party, and arguably with some in the administration. Rubio would need to explain why he changed his mind on Vance, and he would also likely have to resign from office a year and a half early to campaign. Many outside observers insist that a race between the two is on, but that seems based on a desperation for clicks — or a desperation to stop Vance — rather than on real evidence.

The secretary of state is an extremely effective politician, is careful with his words, and is incredibly experienced. He will make a phenomenal president. But if he wanted to run in 2028, he would not have said what he said.

What about the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.? He also polls rather well, usually placing third but sometimes second. The younger Trump, like Rubio, has been at the center of endless presidential chatter for months. In the past few weeks alone, multiple articles from outlets as diverse as the Los Angeles Times and the American Conservative have talked up a Trump Jr. candidacy.

But there is one person not talking up a Trump Jr. presidential run: Trump Jr. Like Rubio, he has explicitly and repeatedly made clear he will not run against Vance. He has expressed frustration at the constant speculation, at one point angrily castigating a Mediaite article, and following it up with another condemnation of the idea on X.

Other candidates known to voters, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are unlikely to catch fire. If Americans wanted to support them, they would already be polling well.

RELATED: Spencer Pratt is showing conservatives how it’s done

Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Staying the course

Of course, there is the possibility that Vance may not run. Those who are desperate for him to stay away from the White House have seized on reporting that Vance would wait to decide to run until after the summer, when his fourth child is born. His desire to wait to make a decision is eminently reasonable; any parent can attest to the change a new child brings, particularly if it is one’s fourth.

But Vance’s statement was also entirely standard. He will be going on a book tour this summer, a perfect soft launch for an unofficial candidacy — unofficial because he would never announce his run before the midterm elections, and there are still two and a half years left in his term.

Until he formally announces, which will likely happen next year, Vance will continue doing what he’s been doing: supporting the president and the administration, fundraising for Republican candidates, and dominating the polls.

It is easy to forget that JD Vance has had one of the fastest rises to the executive branch in modern American political history. Even Barack Obama, who seemed to ascend quickly to the presidency, followed a relatively traditional political path: state senator to senator to president over the course of 12 years. Vance, by contrast, won a U.S. Senate race in 2022 and then the vice presidency only two years later. Now he is the obvious ideological successor to two-termer Donald Trump.

The future is never certain. But in our era of shocking twists, too many have been primed to expect the unexpected. Sometimes reality is obvious: JD Vance is the clear front-runner for the 2028 Republican nomination.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally in The American Mind.

​2028 election, Andrew jackson, Donald trump jr, Gop, Jd vance, Marco rubio, White house, Republican primary, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump 

Over a decade after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished without a trace, Ashton Forbes believes the public still isn’t getting the full story — arguing that the United States government knows what happened to the missing Boeing 777 and is actively concealing critical information from the public.

“There’s clearly a cover-up going on with respect to that missing plane,” Forbes tells BlazeTV host Pat Gray on “Pat Gray Unleashed,” pointing out that the government has satellites everywhere.

“We’ve got over-the-horizon radar systems. We can detect every whale in the ocean and every submarine,” he continues, before pulling out a stack of responses to Freedom of Information Act requests Forbes has sent, which he calls “glamour responses related to MH370.”

“I figured out everything, and I’ve been FOIA requesting everything from them. Every single thing’s being met with a rejection, including a transcript of a communication that the U.S. Navy supposedly intercepted of the plane having a mayday and then a document related to the fate of MH370 that was given to the Malaysian government from the United States,” he explains.

“Why would the CIA glamour response that if they don’t have information about it, right?” he asks, adding, “So the evidence to me is overwhelming, there’s something going on regarding the missing plane.”

Forbes goes on to say he thinks “it’s clearly some type of espionage.”

“I would say it’s got to be China versus the United States, given the proximity, given the South China Sea, given the fact that there’s 20 engineers on the plane that were working for an American company that were flying to Beijing,” he explains.

“The scenario seems pretty obvious that that’s had to be generally what was going on. As to why they did this, I’m not entirely sure,” he says.

“But I can tell you … the director of the science and technology of the CIA is where they’re hiding this super advanced technology,” he adds.

As to what they did with the plane, Forbes tells Gray that it’s a “directed beam teleportation.”

“This sounds crazy as hell of course,” he says. “‘Cause you would think, hey, if you can wormhole something, why can’t you just wormhole it anywhere you want? And in theory you can, but there are limitations in physics.”

“You can’t signal faster than the speed of light,” Forbes explains, calling this the “no communication theorem.”

“You couldn’t do teleportation. But there’s ways around this. And one of those ways if you have an anchor, like if you have a preset anchor, you could think of like a warp gate in sci-fi. If you have an anchor like that, now you have a pre-established connection bridge,” he says.

“So what I think is happening specifically is that when they’re spinning around that plane, they’re aiming exactly the direction in which they want that plane to show up through an extra dimension and then it goes in a straight line,” he continues.

“And that’s where your anchor comes into play. They aim it in a direction, it hits this point, and there’s an opposite polarity charge. Like, let’s say these orbs have a three positive charge polarity. Then there’s an opposite polarity. So it hits that point and then just reemerges in our spacetime,” he adds.

“That is so cool,” Gray comments, shocked.

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​Ashton forbes, Malaysia airlines flight, Mh370, Pat gray, Pat gray unleashed, Wormhole, Teleportation 

A top candidate vying among a crowded field for New Jersey’s 12th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is facing flak from other Democrats over his alleged terror ties.

Physician Adam Hamawy, who also served as a U.S. Army combat surgeon, downplayed his interactions with the “blind cleric” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the late Islamic leader with ties to the terror bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993.

‘Any Muslim is going to be called a terrorist at some point, and these tropes are outdated and worn. Unfortunately, they continue to be used right now.’

Hamawy did not respond to a separate report indicating he had volunteered with a Chicago-based group in Bosnia that was later discovered to be a front for al-Qaeda and shut down.

Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp, who is also running for the Democratic nomination, called Hamawy a “radical extremist” over his ties to Abdel-Rahman.

“The blind sheikh was not a marginal or misunderstood figure,” Mapp said. “He was a convicted terrorist, convicted of seditious conspiracy. He was connected to one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.”

Hamawy admitted that he carpooled with the blind sheikh once in 1991 and later testified for Abdel-Rahman out of a sense of “civic duty,” but he called the accusations Islamophobic.

“I was called as a witness, and I gave my testimony under oath, and then I walked out,” he explained. “It was never an issue back then, and they’re trying to make it an issue now.”

He also fired back at fellow Democrat Mapp.

“My patriotism and my record is clear,” he added. “I think he’s desperate, and desperate people say desperate things.”

Hamawy obtained endorsements from high-profile politicians including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ro Khanna (Calif.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.).

According to a Jewish Insider report, he also worked for the “Benevolence International Foundation” according to an unearthed interview Hamawy had with the Newark Star Ledger from 1996.

The 911 Commission Report found that the group was part of a complex network of organizations set up to help provide resources for terrorist operations linked to Osama bin Laden.

Hamawy, who was born in Egypt, cited his extensive service in the U.S. military to undermine the accusations.

“Any Muslim is going to be called a terrorist at some point, and these tropes are outdated and worn. Unfortunately, they continue to be used right now,” he said. “These are not serious arguments, and they’re getting old.”

RELATED: WHO director was a leader of political group designated as a terrorist organization by US officials

Mapp responded by saying he was not attacking Hamawy’s faith and accused other Democrats of being too fearful to criticize his past ties to terrorists.

Hamawy and Mapp are running for the nomination to seek the office vacated by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D), who is retiring. Whoever wins will run in November against Republican Gregg Mele, who ran unopposed for the Republican nomination.

Abdel-Rahman died in 2017 at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina.

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​Adam hamawy, Islamophobic, Midterm elections, Terror ties, Politics 

So many LGBTQ refugees are fleeing from Republican-controlled states to Seattle that the city’s LGBTQ Commission is calling on the mayor to issue a civil emergency order.

The commission said the throngs of 2SLGBTQIA+ people streaming into Seattle were leading to a strain on community organizations and a lack of resources available to them.

‘We’re seeing families coming to Seattle to protect their trans kids.’

“We are at risk of seeing some of these community-based organizations ceasing to exist in the next three, six, or 12 months,” LGBTQ Commission member Jessa Davis said.

“The downstream costs of letting people slip through the cracks is going to cost the city more,” Davis continued.

She admitted that there were not “busloads of thousands of people coming here” but said that “the numbers are significant.”

On Saturday, members of the Mutual Aid Network for Trans and Intersex Individuals in Seattle and the Gender Equity Movement organized a rally to push for the emergency declaration.

“With the kind of awful stuff that’s going on today, we need to say something,” 76-year-old Maridee Bonadea said.

A report from KIRO-TV verified nine fundraisers through GoFundMe from members of the LGBTQ+ community asking for help to relocate to Seattle.

One fundraiser asked for $2.2K to help three transgender roommates move from North Carolina to Seattle in order to seek “gender affirming care” so they can truly enjoy life. They have only raised $295 from six donations so far.

Mayor Katie Wilson (D) stopped short of issuing the emergency order but said the city would push for greater coordination to provide better access to resources.

She also called for a new city team to “develop community-informed responses that center housing, behavioral health, food, transportation, legal navigation, and survivor-centered violence prevention.”

Davis responded positively to the mayor’s order in an email statement to Blaze News.

“We’re pleased to be working with the Mayor’s Office and City Council as part of the inter-departmental team (IDT) being set up to address this issue,” she wrote. “We’re also preparing to continue engaging with this topic as it relates to the urgent needs our community at this time and will have further comment as we formulate more in-depth policy recommendations in light of the IDT’s objectives.”

RELATED: TPUSA speaker hit with death threats after trans-identifying student is killed — suspect turns himself in

“Trans people are coming, from especially red states, to Seattle, not just for gender-affirming care but for safety,” commission member Andrew Ashiofu said. “We’re seeing families coming to Seattle to protect their trans kids.”

Wilson said she would work with the commission to ensure “Seattle is a place of safety, dignity, and inclusion for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.”

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​Seattle washington, Lgbtq commission, Politics, Emergency declaration, Refugees