Ted Cruz is privately bad-mouthing Vice President JD Vance to donors as the Texas senator weighs a potential 2028 White House bid, according to a new report.
Cruz, who was Donald Trump’s last remaining challenger in the 2016 GOP primary, has not confirmed any presidential ambitions. But he’s giving serious thought to running in the 2028 election, two unnamed sources told The Washington Post.
The Texas senator also appears to be laying the groundwork for an expected showdown with Vance for the 2028 Republican nomination. The vice president is widely expected to mount his own MAGA bid as Trump’s natural successor, despite the president’s own lukewarm backing.
According to the Post, Cruz has been criticizing Vance’s foreign-policy views in chats with GOP donors, complaining that they are overly isolationist. Cruz has also allegedly told a close ally that he’s been encouraged to run.
He is said to have been energized by his outspoken criticism of what he calls “Jew hatred and Israel bashing” within the GOP following the war in Gaza—an issue that has led him to repeatedly clash with former Fox News host and podcaster Tucker Carlson.
Questions are already emerging about whether the hawkish Cruz—once a fierce Trump critic—is the right candidate to unite a party falling apart because of an escalating MAGA civil war involving Carlson and others.
“Can Ted help craft or meld together the traditional Republican approach with the new reality of what the Republican Party is now?” Daron Shaw, a political science professor at the University of Texas, told the Post. “It’s a heavy lift.”
Outgoing Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a onetime MAGA ally who has become increasingly critical of Trump’s policies, also suggested Cruz might struggle to win congressional support over Vance in a 2028 primary.
“The Republicans will be fighting for their identity,” Greene told the Post. “There’ll be Ted Cruz, I’m sure, running against JD Vance. All of us hate Ted Cruz.”
Even Hal Lambert, a major GOP donor who helped organize a super PAC backing Cruz’s 2016 campaign, expressed doubts about Cruz’s chances in a potential showdown with Vance.
“If JD Vance is running, I’m going to be supporting JD Vance,” Lambert said. “I just don’t understand what the platform [Cruz] would be. The platform would be, ‘I’m Ted, and that’s JD?’”
The Daily Beast has contacted Cruz and Vance’s office for comment.
