No one has formally declared their candidacy for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, but a number of names are being bandied around as pretenders to the throne.
They include Fuentes and firebrand congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who last month broke with Trump, saying his second term agenda was a betrayal of his voters.
Vice President JD Vance, who is due to speak at the gathering on Sunday, got a significant boost on Thursday when Erika Kirk endorsed him for a 2028 White House run.
“We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible,” she said to cheers from the thousands-strong crowd. The next US president will be the country’s 48th leader.
Former presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2024, did not comment directly on Kirk’s endorsement.
“We’re at a fork in the road, and I think that there are competing visions for the future of the right,” Ramaswamy told AFP. “I think it’s great for us to have that conversation.”
Carlson hits back at rivals
The Vance endorsement from Turning Point’s new CEO is why Shapiro is annoyed, hinted Carlson, whose newsletter on Friday gloated “Sorry, Ben Shapiro, JD is America First.”
“Trump created this amazing coalition, bringing in people who had never voted Republican before…and that coalition took over the most powerful government in the history of the world,” Carlson told the audience on Thursday.
“So there’s a lot of blood at stake here, as the question becomes, who gets to run it after, who gets the machinery when the President exits the scene.