Erika Kirk, now head of Turning Point USA after her husband Charlie Kirk was murdered in September, said the group will work to ensure Vice President JD Vance is elected president in 2028.
“We’re going to make sure my husband’s friend, JD Vance, gets elected for the 48 in the biggest way possible,” Kirk said late Thursday at Turning Point USA’s annual youth conference in Phoenix, Arizona, referring to the 48th U.S. presidency.
Vance was a frequent guest on Charlie Kirk’s podcast, and Kirk campaigned for Vance when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 to represent Ohio. After Kirk’s murder in September, Vance said the roots of their friendship stretched back to 2017, when Vance was making the rounds to promote his well-received memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
Since Kirk was shot and killed at an event on a university campus in Utah on September 10, Vance has hosted Kirk’s podcast and made a tour stop for Turning Point at the University of Mississippi.
“Without Charlie Kirk, I wouldn’t be vice president of the United States,” Vance said Sept. 15 at a memorial service for Kirk. In the same speech, Vance said, “You tried to silence my friend,” despite there being no credible evidence yet that the 22-year-old suspect had any accomplices in Kirk’s shooting.
While 37-year-old Erika Kirk has hinted at supporting Vance in recent weeks, this is somewhat unusual considering the presidential election is nearly three years in the future.
Vance focused on the midterms
Charlie Kirk, who was 31 at the time of his death, gained attention as a high school student after writing an article for the right-wing Breitbart News. Soon afterward, Republican-supporting businessmen, including Foster Friess and Bill Montgomery, both now deceased, helped finance a youth-oriented organization headed by Kirk.
Kirk subsequently spoke at the next three Republican national conventions, all of which endorsed Trump for president. The alliance was financially beneficial for both Turning Point and the Kirks. The Associated Press reported in 2024.
Erika Kirk has vowed to continue the group’s mission after the death of her husband, father of her two children. She was unanimously elected by the organization’s board of directors to be Turning Point’s next leader.
In her speech Thursday, she said the group would also work to ensure that “President (Donald) Trump has Congress every four years,” referring to next year’s midterm elections.
Aware that the president’s party often suffers negative results in the next midterm elections, Trump has pressured several Republican-led states to enact new maps that benefit the party.
United States Vice President JD Vance said MAGA influencer and Trump ally Charlie Kirk built a movement and “changed the face of conservatism in our time, changing the course of American history.”
Vance also said he is focused on next year’s midterm elections and will talk to Trump about the possibility of a 2028 presidential run sometime after that date.
“I would say that, of course, I’ve been thinking about what this moment might look like after the midterm elections,” Vance told Fox News’ Sean Hannity last month.
Republican vice presidents have been nominated for president several times in the past, but not since George HW Bush in 1988. Mike Pence ran a brief presidential campaign that failed in the 2024 cycle as it was viewed persona non grata by many grassroots MAGA supporters because they did not believe he had the ability to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Vance would offer a diverse background as a candidate — he is a U.S. veteran, Yale Law School graduate and former venture capitalist — but his two-year term in the Senate has been unremarkable in legislative terms. In his first year as vice president he traveled a lot but unlike recent vice presidents like Biden, Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney, he appears to have operated without specific policy portfolios.
Trump teases the 4th election campaign and also talks about Vance and Rubio
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and was the subject of media speculation for 2028. But in a two-part digital article from Vanity Fair, the news has turned heads for the candid and critical comments of White House Chief of Staff Susie WilesRubio reportedly hinted that Vance would be a factor in his own decision about whether to run.
“If JD Vance runs for president, he will be our candidate and I will be one of the first to support him,” Rubio reportedly told journalist Chris Whipple for Vanity Fair.
Trump, sitting on Air Force One with Rubio standing nearby, considered both men “great” candidates in late October.
“I’m not sure anyone would run against these two,” Trump told reporters.
“I think if they ever formed a group, it would be unstoppable,” the president added, appearing to suggest a presidential run that unites Trump administration officials.
The president made the comments even as he sold “Trump 2028” merchandise and hinted at the possibility of another presidential run, saying at one point, “He would like to.” A number of polls suggest Trump’s approval rating is near historic lows and he will be at 82 by the end of his current term.
While Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in his fourth term as president when he died in 1945, the 22nd Amendment, enacted the following decade, states that “no person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice.”
Steve Bannon – former Trump campaign manager in 2016 and Trump’s White House adviser in 2017 – said in a recent interview with The Economist that he didn’t think the change was valid.
“In due course we will lay out the plan, but there is a plan,” Bannon said of the possibility of another Trump candidacy.
“I would trample him”: Ocasio-Cortez
Theoretically, there would be nothing to prevent a president from being chosen as the vice-presidential candidate by a later candidate and exercising influence. Trump dismissed the idea as “too sweet” to a reporter in October.
“I don’t think people would like that,” Trump said. “It’s too sweet. It wouldn’t be right.”
Polls have already been conducted on hypothetical encounters without Trump, including by the polling group Verasight. In a survey of over 1,500 Americans for The Argument magazineAccording to Verasight, Democratic House Speaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is the preferred choice to face Vance by a margin of 2 percentage points.
“Listen, these polls, about three years later, are what they are,” Ocasio-Cortez told a reporter who asked about the poll.
“But let the record show, I would trample him,” a laughing Ocasio-Cortez added.
Like Vance, Ocasio-Cortez has not announced any official plans for a presidential campaign.
