It took six months into President Trump’s second term to get here, but something shifted in Trump World this month. The administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case — including its assertion that a “client list” doesn’t exist — sent tremors through the MAGA ecosystem, creating a permission structure for key players on the right to start treating Trump like a lame duck.
This was a significant development, even though there are obvious reasons to view Trump this way. Constitutional limits prevent him from running again after 2024. That alone creates an expiration date on his relevance that even the most obsequious loyalists can’t ignore forever.
Then there’s the Epstein connection, which didn’t just put a fresh stink on an already scandal-soaked politician. It found him on the wrong side of a definitive MAGA narrative. It’s one thing to be indicted multiple times; it’s quite another to be entangled in the biggest conspiracy theory of our era.
But there’s something else in the air: Trump looks old. We may have grown accustomed to his ALL CAPS rants, but the physical symptoms are harder to normalize — the swollen ankles. The makeup caked awkwardly on his hands.
Taken together — the reality of Trump’s lame-duck status, being out of touch with much of his base and now the physical deterioration — we are left with a picture of a man whose once iron-clad grip on his party is finally beginning to loosen.
The base might not say it outright. MAGA influencers certainly won’t admit it — but they absolutely see it. And more importantly, they’re starting to act on it. The jostling has begun.
For this reason, it’s no longer absurdly premature to start talking about succession. And, for my money, there are three leading contenders.
Vice President JD Vance — seemingly the obvious successor — is clearly positioning himself as heir apparent to Trumpism 2.0: similar themes, better vocabulary, a little more polish and (crucially) a future.
Tucker Carlson now also seems to be testing out what it would look like to actually run for office. And Donald Trump Jr. is lurking around the perimeter; the assumption is that his name will carry him somewhere, though it’s not clear where (or even if) anyone would follow him.
For those hoping the MAGA spell would break post-Trump, the prospects are strikingly bleak. These three men all occupy somewhat similar turf — a figure like Nikki Haley will not be not on this list.
Trumpism will survive, albeit without Trump. But winning the internecine battle to lead this movement might be a Pyrrhic victory.
Trump’s coalition cannot be inherited any more than his celebrity status or charisma can. The coalition wasn’t built to outlive 2024. It is an unruly jumble of people with wildly incompatible worldviews, glued together by little more than shared grievance and a cult of personality.
It includes paleoconservative nationalists and neoconservative interventionists, Christian fundamentalists and manosphere libertines, fans of McDonald’s and crunchy health nuts. And it worked, somehow, in 2024 — but only for Trump.
This has always been the dirty secret of Trumpism: It’s not transferrable. You could see it in the 2018 midterms, when Republicans took a beating without Trump on the ballot. You saw it again in 2022, when a rogues’ gallery of Trump-endorsed candidates flopped spectacularly.
The Trump base doesn’t show up for the brand — it shows up for the man.
So what happens when the man is gone? We’re about to find out. For the first time in nearly a decade, the right is confronting a future without a clear standard-bearer. And every would-be successor faces the same paradox: To win Trump’s base, you have to sound like Trump. But the more you sound like Trump, the more you remind people you’re not him.
It’s difficult to imagine that any of the frontrunners could maintain the same patchwork coalition. Vance might be able to pick off the nationalist-intellectual set, but he lacks Trump’s charisma, and gives off oily politician vibes.
Tucker might dominate the culture-war lane. Don Jr. might do okay with the too-online meme crowd. But no one can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Because the thing they’re all trying to inherit — Trumpism— isn’t an ideology. It’s a person.
This is the tragedy and farce of the post-Trump GOP: It bet everything on a single man, and now it has no idea how to function without him.
Trump hollowed out the party, scorched the institutions and rewired the voter base. And he will likely leave behind a political husk that still bears his name but contains little of his animating style.
Of course, Trump isn’t gone yet. Republicans — thanks, perhaps, to their plans to gerrymander Texas — could still hold on to Congress in November. Maybe Trump can ultimately find a way to outrun the Epstein controversy and set the terms for the next four years. And, regardless, he could also play a vital role in picking (or sabotaging) whoever inherits his mantle.
But that doesn’t change the fact that his era is already ending. The spell is finally starting to wear off. And somewhere, just beneath the surface, it feels like the scramble for 2028 has already begun.
The question isn’t whether someone can pick up the torch. It’s whether that person can prevent the flame from being extinguished entirely.
Matt K. Lewis is a columnist, podcaster and author of the books “Too Dumb to Fail” and “Filthy Rich Politicians.”