The 2028 Republican presidential primary is still more than a year away from formally getting underway, but apparently nobody told JD Vance and Ted Cruz.
The two prominent Republicans are already trading remarkably personal shots over who is — and isn’t — positioning himself to succeed Donald Trump.
The latest escalation came Saturday, when Cruz responded to Vance publicly accusing the Texas senator of effectively running for president already.
“In my experience, people engage in political bomb-throwing when they’re feeling insecure,” Cruz told Politico in a phone interview.
“So he’s welcome to make whatever comments he likes. I’m going to keep focusing on the midterms and helping us win on Election Day in the next 30 days.”
That “insecure” jab didn’t come out of nowhere.
Two days earlier, Vance had been asked by NBC News about Cruz’s increasingly public interest in the 2028 race.
Vance didn’t exactly dance around the question.
“It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president,” Vance said.
“At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”
That’s quite an exchange between two Republicans who are both insisting that their attention is currently on the 2026 midterms.
And Cruz hasn’t exactly hidden his longer-term ambitions.
The Texas senator — who finished second to Trump in the 2016 Republican primary — said in August that it was “no secret” that he wanted to be president and has separately said he intends to be “part of the discussion” about the GOP’s future.
He has also pushed back against any suggestion that the Republican Party has already settled on Vance as Trump’s inevitable successor.
“There is going to be a full discussion about who we are and what we believe,” Cruz told MS NOW in August, adding that he would “certainly be part of the discussion.”
The tension between the two men has been building for months.
Cruz has increasingly tried to distinguish his brand of conservatism from parts of the MAGA movement associated with Vance, particularly over foreign policy. Axios reported earlier this year that Cruz had criticized Vance in conversations with donors and has repeatedly clashed with Vance ally Tucker Carlson.
Cruz has also broken with Trump in several Republican primary contests, endorsing candidates running against Trump-backed Republicans.
Vance, meanwhile, has repeatedly avoided formally declaring himself a 2028 candidate and says his immediate priority is helping Republicans in the midterms.
But his decision to publicly accuse Cruz of already running prompted a response that made the underlying rivalry unusually explicit.
The irony is difficult to miss: Vance says Cruz should be focused on the midterms rather than 2028. Cruz says he is focused on the midterms — and suggests Vance is throwing political bombs because he’s “insecure.”
Whatever happens in 2028, Republicans apparently don’t intend to wait until then to start arguing about it.
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