Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s feud with President Trump just veered into an unexpected direction.
Paul has his eyes on a bigger prize.
And Rand Paul just picked one unthinkable fight with J.D. Vance.
As West Wing Daily reports:
Erika Kirk kicked off Turning Point USA’s 2025 AmFest conference by announcing the group was endorsing J.D. Vance for President in 2028.
Erika explained that electing Vance President fulfilled the political wish of her murdered husband, Charlie.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Vanity Fair that he also planned to endorse Vance for President if Vance sought the nomination.
ABC’s leftwing activist Jonathan Karl asked Paul if the GOP grassroots, represented by Erika Kirk and Turning Point, and the institutional Trump GOP, represented by Rubio, were already coming together to signal that Vice President Vance was the MAGA heir apparent.
“We saw Erika Kirk endorse JD Vance already for 2028 for president,” Karl stated. “That was interesting. But also interesting was that Marco Rubio, who in that article in Vanity Fair said that ‘if JD Vance runs, he’ll be the nominee, and I’ll be one of the first to support him.’ I know it’s early. What do you make of this? Is JD Vance the heir apparent here?”
Rand Paul used the opportunity to all but announce he was running for President in 2028 on an anti-Trump and anti-Vance platform.
“I think there needs to be representatives in the Republican Party who still believe international trade is good, who still believe in free market capitalism, who still believe in low taxes,” Paul declared.
“See, it used to separate conservatives and liberals that conservatives thought it was a spending problem; we didn’t want less revenue, we wanted less spending. But now all these pro-tariff protectionists love taxes. And so they tax, tax, tax, and then they brag about all the revenue coming in. That has never been a conservative position. So I’m going to continue to try to lead a conservative free market wing in the party, and we’ll see where things lead over time,” Paul added.”
“And that’s not JD Vance?” Karl asked.
“No,” Paul shot back.
Rand Paul has emerged as a thorn in Trump’s side.
The deficit shrank by two percent in 2025 thanks to Trump freezing spending.
2025 also saw the largest single-year decline in federal workers since World War II.
But Paul still complains that Trump hasn’t done enough on spending.
Paul opposed the Big Beautiful Bill that funded mass deportations.
Paul also opposed President Trump’s America First tariffs and supports globalist free trade arrangements that Trump sought to blow up because they ripped off American workers.
Paul also never endorsed Trump in the 2024 election.
