Ted Cruz Reportedly Gearing Up for 2028 Campaign — And Showdown With JD Vance

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is reportedly gearing up for a 2028 presidential campaign — and a likely showdown with Vice President JD Vance in the Republican primary.

According to Axios’s Alex Isenstadt, Cruz has been courting donors, “hitting the speaker’s circuit,” and involving himself in his party’s preparations for next year’s midterms in order to lay the groundwork for a second bid to take the White House.

Isenstadt also reports that Cruz’s ongoing feud with Tucker Carlson, a Vance ally, is part of his effort to set himself apart and send a shot across the vice president’s bow.

From the Axios story:

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid by leaning into his feud with Tucker Carlson — and staking out turf as a traditional, pro-interventionist Republican.

Why it matters: By poking at Carlson’s isolationist foreign policy views, accusing him of antisemitism and more, Cruz is putting himself on a collision course with Vice President Vance, a Carlson ally widely seen as the 2028 GOP frontrunner.

• The senator also is diving into issues that are tearing at President Trump’s MAGA movement, namely ideological differences over Israel.
• “We have a responsibility to speak out even when it’s uncomfortable,” Cruz said in a statement to Axios. “When voices in our own movement push dangerous and misguided ideas, we can’t look the other way. I won’t hesitate to call out those who peddle destructive, vile rhetoric and threaten our principles and our future. Silence in the face of recklessness is not an option.”

Cruz has been an outspoken critic of Carlson and a “growing cancer” of anti-Semitism on the Right.

“This poison of anti-Semitism on the right, it is spreading with young people. It is gaining traction,” declared Cruz in a speech last month. “But I will tell you, there is a movement among Christians, particularly young Christians. The public polling numbers of support for Israel among young Christians is plummeting. And they’re being spread lies. They’re being spread lies, isolationist lies that we should withdraw from the world because nobody wants to hurt us. But they’re also being spread theological lies.”

Vance, by contrast, has been critical of Fuentes, but has stayed silent on Carlson, who reportedly lobbied on the former Ohio senator’s behalf during last year’s veepstakes. And during a Turning Point USA event last month, Vance appeared to accept the anti-Semitic premises of one student who asserted that Jews support the “prosecution” of Christianity while asking a question about the United States’ relationship with Israel.