Trump signals surprising approach to choosing his successor as GOP’s 2028 field grows

President Donald Trump says he may not put his thumb on the scale when it comes to picking the Republican Party’s 2028 presidential nominee.

“Probably, not necessarily,” Trump said in a post-midterm election interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” when asked whether he will endorse in the primary to pick the next Republican nominee. “So I may or may not get involved… Maybe I’m better off not getting involved.”

Trump for months has touted the GOP’s “great bench” when asked about the likely Republican field of contenders aiming to succeed him in the White House.

The president reiterated that opinion after the GOP’s drubbing in last week’s midterm elections, as the party lost control of both the House and the Senate.

VANCE, CRUZ, DESANTIS DIAGNOSE GOP’S MIDTERM DISASTER AS 2028 BATTLE BEGINS

“I think we have an unbelievable bench of talent,” Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum in an election night interview on Fox News.. “We have a great group of talented people that I think would do a very good job.”

Early jockeying by the potential contenders began the morning after Election Day, with midterm post-mortems by Vice President JD Vance, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis grabbing plenty of headlines.

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“There’s going to be a robust field of candidates that test the waters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and that’s exactly as it should be,” Nicole Schlinger, a veteran Iowa-based Republican strategist, told Fox News Digital. “We’re going to get an opportunity to see which approach to our message of where we as the Republican Party goes next is going to resonate the most with the grassroots voters who are going to show up and kick tires.”

Here’s a look at the list of potential GOP presidential contenders in the burgeoning race to become the party’s next standard-bearer and impact which direction the party will head in a post-Trump era.

Vice President JD Vance

The vice president has long been viewed as the likely frontrunner for the 2028 GOP nomination and Trump’s heir apparent.

But the conventional wisdom from pundits is that the shellacking the GOP took in the midterms has transformed what may have been a Vance coronation into a more competitive and crowded nomination battle.

Vance kicked off the post-midterms debate last Wednesday morning with a roughly 600-word postmortem on X, blaming the war with Iran for the ballot box setbacks, in what some pundits viewed as an early pitch to eventually claim the MAGA and America First mantle.

Even with last week’s setbacks, Vance leads many of the early 2028 GOP presidential primary polls, has built a formidable fundraising network thanks in part to his role as the Republican National Committee’s finance chair, and has a team of advisors and aides that would form the beginnings of a presidential campaign.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Rubio, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, is doing his best to stay far away from the 2028 spotlight.

The former senator from Florida has long been floated by Trump and by pundits as a possible White House contender, and his support in early 2028 polls has soared. But Rubio has downplayed such speculation, and dismissed reports he was considering stepping down as secretary of state to lay the groundwork for a presidential run.

Rubio, who has said a handful of times over the past year that he’d back Vance if the vice president decides to launch a White House campaign, was asked about 2028 Monday while taking questions from reporters during a stop in France.

“I don’t know why you’re wasting your time,” Rubio said. “I’m not going to talk about 2028 any longer. I’m just not going to talk about 2028 anymore.”

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas

The conservative firebrand senator from Texas, who was runner-up to Trump in the bruising 2016 presidential primaries, has made no secret that he may run for the White House again in 2028.

In his post-Election Day assessment, Cruz described the midterms as a “blue tsunami” and warned that his party had lost touch with voters, particularly in the Lone Star State.

“2026 was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an a– kicking,” Cruz wrote. “It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation.”

In a possible preview of the Republican primaries, Cruz has put plenty of daylight between himself and Vance over support for Israel, with Cruz spotlighting his support for the Israeli government.

Boosting Cruz if he decides to run would be his top-ranked podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” which has allowed the senator to build a massive grassroots network.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

The term-limited conservative Florida governor, who finishes up in Tallahassee at the start of the new year, ran for the White House in 2024. He was an early frontrunner before being decisively defeated by Trump.

DeSantis held a news conference the morning after Election Day when he called the midterm election results “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans across the country.”

“Let’s just be clear, that is going to hurt — not just for the next two years… That is something that can reverberate for the next decade or more,” he said. “We knew it could be worse. I don’t think most of us thought it would be this bad.”

But DeSantis, who sat for a slew of media interviews in the wake of the midterms, repeatedly highlighted that “the one state that was able to hold the line and withstand that is right here in the free state of Florida.”

While 2028 buzz about DeSantis surged since last week’s election, the governor took to social media on Friday to blast a report that he was planning a 2028 run, emphasizing, “I have not reached out to anybody about running for anything. Just another pathetic attempt to garner clicks.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence

Pence, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has said he has “no plans” to run for the White House again in 2028.

But Pence has seen Advancing American Freedom, his policy and advocacy organization, dramatically expand over the past year.

And Trump’s first vice president told Fox News Digital earlier this year that his fight to keep the Republican Party from drifting too far from its conservative roots and principles, amid a rise of populism in the GOP and big government creep during Trump’s second administration, is “the calling of my life right now.”

Last week Pence argued, “The American people have rejected our party’s shift toward economic populism, and our majorities in Congress and state legislatures and governorships across the country paid the price.”

But he emphasized, “The conservative comeback starts today.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp

The conservative term-limited governor, who finishes out his tenure in Atlanta in two months, is also seen as a potential White House contender.

In the wake of the midterm shellacking, Kemp spelled out a GOP vision centered on the “conservative principles of our party.”

“It’s time we get back to those principles in the months and years to come,” the governor wrote.

Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin

Youngkin, who instantly soared to political stardom after his 2021 gubernatorial victory energized Republicans a year after Trump lost the White House and the Senate in the 2020 election, has consistently downplayed talk of a 2028 presidential campaign.

Instead, Youngkin has focused on his signature issue  — education  — by pushing to promote school choice programs through his recently formed national policy group Empowering America’s Parents.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

Christie, who unsuccessfully ran for the 2016 and 2024 GOP nominations, is seriously mulling a third run for the White House.

“The midterms were a repudiation of the GOP and Donald Trump. It is time Republicans do the autopsy, learn the lessons and move forward,” Christie, a vocal Republican critic of the president, argued in the days after last week’s election. “The Trump era is over. He has led us to the greatest losses this country has seen for a party since Richard Nixon.”

Christie has said he’ll decide on a presidential run in the next few months, telling Fox News Digital recently, “I think there’s a lot of flexibility on the timing.”

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska

Bacon, a former Air Force brigadier general who has at times split with Trump on foreign policy and national security issues, decided against running for re-election this year and exits Congress in two months.

Bacon has said he is open to a potential run for president in 2028 or serving in a supporting role on another Republican candidate’s ticket.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, earned national attention as Trump’s White House press secretary for much of his first term.

Sanders, who made history four years ago as the first woman elected Arkansas governor and last week won re-election by double digits, is increasingly seen as a potential presidential contender.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas

Cotton, who took a hard look at a 2024 GOP presidential run before deciding against launching a campaign, was just re-elected.

The senator, an Army veteran who served in combat in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before becoming a rising star in the Republican Party and who was on Trump’s running mate short list two years ago, is also viewed as a potential White House hopeful.

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida

Scott, a self-made multimillionaire and former two-term governor who’s the wealthiest member of the Senate, also mulled a 2024 bid before running for re-election.

Midterm election campaign trail stops in Iowa and New Hampshire  — the two states that lead off the Republican presidential nominating calendar  — sparked speculation that Scott was considering a 2028 campaign.

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana

Kennedy, who’s up for re-election in 2028, has said he would consider a White House run instead of seeking another term in the Senate if he felt he could no longer be effective in the Senate or if he felt dissatisfied with the Republican presidential primary field.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Pompeo, a former four-term congressman from Kansas who served as CIA director and later as the top U.S. diplomat in Trump’s first administration, also took a hard look at a 2024 run before passing.

Asked last year about a 2028 bid, Pompeo told Fox News Digital, “We’ll see what the good Lord brings in a couple of years.”

He’s currently viewed by pundits as a possible contender.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky

The vocal Republican critic of the president who relentlessly pressed for the release of the Epstein files before losing his bid for renomination earlier this year to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein has said he’s “not ruling anything in or out” when it comes to a presidential bid.

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Last week, Axios first reported that a group of Libertarian Party operatives and anti-Trump MAGA defectors was urging Massie to run for the White House as a third-party or Libertarian presidential candidate.