Could Donald Trump Jr. make a 2028 presidential bid?

Although he claimed during his contentious “60 Minutes” interview that he wasn’t a king — “[I]f I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you,” he told correspondent Norah O’Donnell — it was clear he wished he was one. These days he’s spending most of his time trying to turn the White House into an ersatz version of Versailles, with gaudy, gilded gewgaws strewn all over the Oval Office, and replacing floors and walls with marble and granite. That’s on top of his notorious ballroom project and his arch, both of which are clearly designed as monuments to himself. He has put his name and posters of himself on buildings all over Washington, D.C., and now the Treasury is printing money bearing his signature and the State Department is issuing passports featuring his image. He’s even holding a gladiator contest on the White House lawn in June to celebrate his birthday. If he actually were a medieval king or a Roman emperor, you might wonder what he would be doing differently.

When the online store for the Trump Organization started selling “Trump 2028” hats, most people thought they were just being obnoxious or trying to keep the possibility alive in order to avoid being a lame duck. And after his efforts to cling to power after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, one can discount the possibility that he might actually attempt a run for a third term. But Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal, has been polling his donors about the prospects of Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to see which one they prefer (Rubio) and even suggesting they should run together. 

That makes sense. The vice president is always seen as the president’s natural successor, and it’s certainly not unheard of for a secretary of state to throw their hat into the ring. 

But there is a third contender who consistently registers double digits in 2028 polling, with numbers quite close to the top two. His name might surprise you: Donald Trump Jr. The president’s eldest son polls around the same level as Rubio, and he is popular among younger voters and MAGA supporters alike across most surveys — and he has for months. 

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There was a long-running parlor game during his father’s first term about which of the children would run for president after daddy was done. In the early days, Ivanka was assumed to be the natural successor, and many thought that Trump had brought her into the White House to groom her for the role. According to Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” which chronicled the president’s first year in the White House, Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner “made an earnest deal” when they took their administration jobs: “If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she’d be the one to run for president.” Trump himself told the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, “I think she’d be very, very hard to beat.” (He also suggested her to run the World Bank, because “she’s very good with numbers.”) 

But Vicky Ward, author of the 2019 book “Kushner, Inc. Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump,” quoted the president’s former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn as saying, “She thinks she’s going to be president of the United States. She thinks this is like the Kennedys, the Bushes, and now the Trumps.” Ward also reported there was, at the time, some very serious sibling rivalry between Ivanka and her Don Jr. on the subject. The elder Trump, the author said in an interview, “wouldn’t mind having a go himself.” Ward noted that Don Jr. “plays much better with Republicans,” having appeared at around 70 events for Republicans in 2018, while “Ivanka hardly did any.”

As it turns out, Ivanka has pretty much given up on politics, as far as anyone can tell, and Kushner is serving as one of Trump’s “peace envoys” with little diplomatic success while making major personal financial gains. Don Jr., meanwhile, has been keeping the MAGA home fires burning the whole time. 

Sure, he and his brother Eric are making money hand over fist in the crypto game, and they have recently been dabbling in war profiteering. But he’s definitely keeping at least one eye on politics. “There’s no question that Donald Jr. wants to have a future in the Republican Party and sees himself as the heir apparent,” Coppins told the Times of London in 2020.

There is perhaps no greater sign that Don Jr. is considering a run than the Wall Street Journal’s April 29 report that Jeff Bezos and Amazon are in talks to bring back “The Apprentice” with Junior as the star. If there is one factor that everyone acknowledges was key to Trump’s success in his first campaign — and, I would argue, in 2024 as well — it is his image as a massively successful businessman thanks to the near-decade he spent on that reality show. 

As we learned from several exposés, including “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success” by New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, that image was crafted by the show’s creators, who had first attempted to sign real billionaire moguls, such as Warren Buffett and Richard Branson, for the role. They had to settle for Trump, who they found was actually running a small, shoddy family company in offices that were reportedly run-down and foul-smelling. But they worked their magic, and Trump was reinvented as a successful tycoon, which lodged in the minds of millions who believe it to this day, despite mountains of evidence that he’s little more than a talented hustler. 

Reprising his father’s role could be the perfect launching pad for Don Jr. — and it may explain why the president inexplicably recently posted an old article about “The Apprentice’s” early ratings. And as JV Last noted in the Bulwark, the younger Trump has some real advantages. He could almost certainly inherit much of his father’s political infrastructure, including lists and potentially even a big chunk of his war chest. But Don Jr.’s real clout would come from the fact that his entry into the race would “cut the knees out from under” Vance and Rubio, since he presumably would have the president’s endorsement. 

One of the producers of “The Apprentice” told Buettner and Craig, “We were making [Trump] out to be royalty in almost every opportunity,” and that’s exactly how the president sees himself. What would be more in keeping with his dynastic ambitions than to force the Republican Party to make his first born son the heir apparent? After all, they already have the hats.