President Trump is dominating the political stage for now. But attention will shift soon enough toward the 2028 race.

Trump has at times entertained the idea of seeking a third term — a notion encouraged by some of the most combative voices in MAGA World such as Steve Bannon.

The near-universal expert view is that such a quest would be flagrantly unconstitutional. Trump would also be 82 by Election Day 2028.

Assuming Trump indeed exits the White House for a final time at the end of his second term, the battle to succeed him will be fierce.

Tomorrow, The Hill will publish similar rankings for Democrats in 2028. For now, here’s where the Republican field stands.

1. Vice President Vance

Vice President Vance is the most obvious inheritor of Trump’s mantle.

Part of the reason is simple: He is the much-younger vice president to an incumbent president.

But there are more Vance-specific factors as well.

The vice president has long ago abandoned the criticisms of Trump that he once leveled. Despite the vigor of those critiques — he mulled to a friend in 2016 whether Trump could end up being “America’s Hitler” — he appears to have been forgiven by the MAGA base.

Vance is helped in connecting with Trump's working-class supporters by his famously difficult upbringing, as memorialized in his book “Hillbilly Elegy.”

The vice president also shares Trump’s isolationist instincts on foreign policy — a tendency most obviously seen when the duo berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office earlier this year.

Vance is often combative with the media but he has not made many enemies within the Trump-era GOP. Figures like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FBI Director Kash Patel are all much more controversial within the party.

There are still question marks over some of Vance’s political instincts. During last year’s campaign, a 2021 jibe about “childless cat ladies” came back to haunt him.

But for now, there’s no real doubt that Vance is the Republican front-runner to succeed Trump.

2. Donald Trump Jr.

Donald Trump Jr.’s lofty position on this list is rooted less in his political skills — which are unproven, at best — than in the plausible possibility he would benefit........

© The Hill