JD Vance and Marco Rubio aren’t alone in maneuvering for a post-Donald Trump power grab—an entire cast of ambitious rivals is preparing to battle for the president’s throne, according to his biographer.
Author Michael Wolff said on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast that Trump, who turns 80 in June and is facing down a potential midterm rout in November, will shortly enter his “lame duck” period, in which his “power starts to ebb because other people start to step up” and “the party begins to think beyond the current presidency.”
Vance, 41, and Rubio, 54, are already in the ring, Wolff said—pushed into rivalry by Trump himself—but a set of “interesting wild cards” could scramble the succession fight.
The author suggested that warmongering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, 45, is also circling the MAGA crown and could benefit from the reality that “who prevails in these kinds of races has as much to do with who fails.”
“Is Pete Hegseth somehow, because he’s a performer, because he seems shameless, because he’s pro-military in some comical way, does this make him someone who can be a number two or three, and then number one and two fall, and he rises? Unlikely, but not impossible,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles.
On the other flank is Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who has publicly broken with Trump over the Iran war, going so far as to apologize for helping return him to power.
“I’ve had this discussion on quite a number of occasions with Tucker about his desire to run for president,” Wolff said. “And he has done the deflecting, but not the denying.”
He argued that Carlson, 56, is in some sense “the natural post-Trump candidate,” because he is a media figure who has had “a large and consistent audience over quite a long period of time” and has “probably more than any other articulated that basic MAGA point of view.”
Backing Carlson for president is former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who Wolff said made a “play” for attention by flipping from diehard Trump devotee to a fierce critic—the exact opposite of Vance’s trajectory. Coles suggested the 51-year-old could be eyeing Carlson’s VP slot.
Wolff said that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who at one point during the 2024 presidential race polled near 22 percent before suspending his campaign—is all but certain to mount another bid.
“Of course he’s gonna run. What does he have to lose? It has worked for him,” the author said of the 72-year-old anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. “This guy who did nothing, a wastrel, a marginal figure, a joke, suddenly assumes national importance.”
Wolff argued that on sheer name recognition, the president’s 48-year-old son, Donald Trump Jr., would “probably go to the head of the field”—and could be “pretty convincing” to the MAGA base if he secured “the complete support of his father.”
But Trump views his own children as “a danger to him as much as anyone else,” and is unwilling to share his legacy with them, Wolff said.
“He often says terrible things about his children, including Don Jr. One of his frequent riffs in the past has been, ‘I really regret giving him my name,’” recounted the biographer, who was granted access to the White House during Trump’s first term.
In fact, Trump doesn’t want anyone to take over his mantle and will be rooting for the Democrat instead, Wolff suggested.
“He will hobble anyone trying to be the nominee. But whoever is the nominee, he will then undermine,” the author said.
“It’s part of the story to be told, and that I trust we will be telling, how he reacts to all of this over the next two and a half years. It won’t be pretty.”
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung sent the Daily Beast a recycled statement:
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
The Daily Beast has requested comment from Vance’s office, the State Department, the Pentagon, Carlson, Greene, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Trump Organization for comment.
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