Friday Mailbag! 📬

Happy Friday!

We made it!

This is a GREAT day for new music releases. Brandon Flowers’ country album, the new Wild Pink and a Westside Cowboy record I have been waiting for months for are all out today.

Given them a listen!

As always, these are real questions from real paid subscribers to this newsletter.

Let’s open the mail!

Q: Approval ratings being what they are, when do you expect the first significant Republican to declare for 2028? And don’t think there will be some holding pattern until Trump either declares he won’t run or there is a definitive ruling against it?

A: In a normal world, you would see GOP candidates announcing for president shortly after Thanksgiving.

The message would be simple: “We got beat bad in the midterms. It’s time to move on from the Trump era — so that we can keep control of the White House.”

After all, Trump is in the low 40s (at best) in approval ratings. Polls on how he has managed the economy, the war in Iran etc. show him in worse shape than that. He is very likely to be confronted with, at least, a Democratic-controlled House after the midterms — an election likely to be bad for his party largely due to his unpopularity.

But, as you know, this is not a normal world. Trump, despite his increasing unpopularity, has, broadly speaking, retained control of the GOP. And, unlike other presidents in the latter half of their second term, there’s no way in hell that Trump will start to move off center stage to make way for the people seeking to follow him in office.

While I don’t think Trump tries to run again in 2028 — he is constitutionally barred from doing so! — I do think his inability to care about anything other than himself does delay the 2028 race to replace him on the GOP side.

Remember that JD Vance’s entire candidacy is premised on being the Trump candidate. Which means he will do (or not do) whatever Trump asks of him to make sure that he has the president’s backing. Ditto Marco Rubio — if he doesn’t just take the VP nod from Vance.

And there’s not really a serious GOP 2028 candidate who is ok with antagonizing Trump by a) announcing a presidential bid sooner rather than later and b) planning to run expressly against Trump’s time in office.

Q: Why, when Trump verbally attacks reporters for asking questions he doesn’t like, don’t any of their colleagues in the profession say ANYTHING? I know it won’t change him, and maybe it would make things worse. But it deeply frustrates me that no one even tries to call him out on his behavior.