A longtime Republican political consultant says her political focus groups are throwing up a shock name as a contender to inherit Trump’s MAGA mantle.
With the Trump administration now deeply unpopular with Republican voters who put him into the White House for a second term, speculation over who might be their choice to replace him come 2028 is running wild.
JD Vance is now considered the lone Iran War skeptic in the government, but he is facing questions over his ability to command popular support. Marco Rubio has come to the fore, but many in the MAGA movement see him as complicit in the unpopular conflict. Possible alternatives have included Trump nemesis Thomas Massie and even “America First” broadcaster Tucker Carlson due to the strength of their anti-war rhetoric.
Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican political consultant who now publishes the anti-Trump conservative outlet The Bulwark, says one unlikely name is gaining traction: conspiracy theory-pushing MAGA influencer, Candace Owens.
Longwell, who resigned as national board chair of the Log Cabin Republicans over their nomination of Trump, runs regular focus groups to gauge public opinion.
She says few non-politicians come up more often as a possible Trump replacement than Candace Owens.
Longwell reported that Mycal, a Biden-to-Trump voter from North Carolina, told her last year: “I think Candace Owens is great. I would vote for her in a minute.”
Rex, a voter from California, told another of Longwell’s groups: “People say she’s nutty, I don’t think she’s nutty. I think she’s very well-grounded,”
Owens, 37, got her start as a Turning Point USA firebrand before reinventing herself as a freewheeling broadcaster. Her popularity surged after the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk, when she pushed a series of radical claims, including the theory that Israel was behind his killing. Those claims made her plenty of enemies, but they did little to dent her standing in the focus groups.
“I follow Candace Owens very closely. I have for years,” said Melissa, a 2020 and 2024 Trump voter from Pennsylvania, in a group last November. She added that while critics call Owens crazy, “she’s extremely articulate, and she also investigates things.”
And, in a January 2026 group, Kim, a Trump-voting Gen Z woman from Virginia, said: “I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flack for this one, but I am a Candace Owens fan. I think she’s a very smart lady.”
Owens has teased a run before. “I love America. Thinking about running for President,” she tweeted in February 2021, when she was not yet old enough to legally hold the office. In December 2024, she posted: “Should I run for President with Thomas Massie in 2028 or 2032? Can’t decide.”
Not everyone is sold. “After Charlie Kirk, man, she spiraled and started saying some wild stuff, and so I didn’t trust her anymore,” said Rachel, a 2020 and 2024 Trump voter from Louisiana, in an April 2026 group. “And now I think she’s a whack job, sadly.” Another Louisiana participant, Angela, added: “The conspiracy theories are just out of control.”
No woman has ever been elected president of the United States. But Owens’s reach now stretches well beyond the MAGA base. Longwell pointed to Hunter Biden, 56, sitting down for an interview on Owens’ show last week as the latest sign of her crossover appeal.
Once one of Trump’s loudest cheerleaders, Owens has turned on the president. Longwell noted she now stands openly against the MAGA mainstream that made her.
Before her hyperbolic Charlie and Erika Kirk theories, Owens gained a new level of notorioty when the president of France, Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, filed a lawsuit against her in July 2025 over her debunked claim that the first lady was born a man. Owens says Trump personally phoned her in February 2025 to ask her to drop the claim. She refused, and the Macrons sued that July.
Trump has declined to defend her, with his longtime attorney Marc Kasowitz quitting her legal team in April, Bloomberg Law reported. The president instead trashed her on Truth Social, branding her attack on Brigitte Macron “despicable” and calling Owens “an extremely Low IQ individual.”
Owens has now become a favorite target of Laura Loomer, 32, the far-right activist widely cast as Trump’s online attack dog. The two have traded vicious blows for months.
Trump’s own would-be heirs continue to jostle for position. Vance, 41, has been isolated the Daily Mail reported, with one source close to the president branding him “a non-event in the West Wing.”
Secretary of State Rubio, 54, has watched his own stock soar. “Rubio has more mojo than Vance. The President listens to him,” a White House insider said.
A Vance spokesperson dismissed the talk of his future, telling the Mail the report was “a flimsy compilation of completely illegitimate sources who have no idea what they’re talking about.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Candace Owens to ask whether she would consider a 2028 run.
