‘Oh No!’ Ted Cruz Flatly Rejects Claim GOP Is United Behind JD Vance as a 2028 Candidate

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) emphatically rejected the suggestion that Republicans have already settled on Vice President JD Vance as their standard-bearer for 2028, predicting the post-Trump GOP would undergo some philosophical soul-searching while conspicuously leaving the door open to another White House run of his own.

The senator was pressed on the party’s future during a wide-ranging interview with MS NOW’s Ali Vitali ahead of the release of his new biography, Going Further: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas.

As the interview closed, Vitali noted that the Republican had been active this primary season with endorsements, some of which had defeated candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump.

“Yeah, look, my philosophy on endorsements is I support the most conservative candidate who can win. So, I’m interested in both. I look at number one, what’s their record? Have they been a conservative? Have they been principled?” he said.

“Do they have to be MAGA?” Vitali pressed.

Pausing a second, Cruz replied: “They have to have a path to win. And so there is no Never Trump lane.”

He continued to commend the president as a “fearless” and “extraordinary” figure who had changed the face of Republican politics. He said he talked to the president every week to help guide his hand, but said that while Trump “frequently” listens, he doesn’t always follow his counsel.

“I wish sometimes there was more message discipline and focus,” he critiqued.

He continued: “Look, I think going forward, we’re in the midst of a debate about who our party is and what we believe. And I think economically we’ve got a debate. Are we a small government free market conservative party? Are we a big government nanny state party?”

“Is this a party that has coalesced already behind JD Vance?” Vitali asked.

“Oh, no!” Cruz replied bluntly. “There’s going to be a full discussion about who we are and what we believe.”

Asked whether he planned to be part of that discussion, Cruz declined to rule anything out: “There’ll be time to figure that out.”

“I’ll certainly be part of the discussion,” he continued, “because I care deeply about, economically, I think we should be a conservative party and on foreign policy we’ve got to debate; are we an isolationist party that withdraws from the world, or do we believe in American leadership?”

Cruz, who finished second to Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, argued that the president’s dominance of the GOP would not necessarily transfer neatly to a successor.

“Trump is a black swan event. He is a unique historical figure. There’s never been anyone like him. I don’t think there’ll be anyone like him going forward,” Cruz said. “And we’re going to have over the next several years a conversation among Republicans.”

Noting that the Democratic Party was having its own “civil war” with a democratic socialist wing, he concluded: “On the Republican side, we’re going to have to decide who we are and what do we believe.”

Watch above via YouTube.

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