The 2028 race is barely a thought on most people’s radar.
But inside the circles that matter, names are already moving.
And one first-term senator just drew serious buzz as JD Vance’s potential running mate — and the reasons why tell you something important about where the America First movement is headed.
Schmitt Catches Vance’s Eye
Axios reported that US Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) has developed an increasingly close relationship with Vice President JD Vance — close enough that Schmitt now sits on the short list of potential 2028 running mates should Vance seek the Republican presidential nomination.
Vance, according to the report, views the 51-year-old Missouri Republican as “trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator.”
That is not throwaway praise. Vance has made similar admiration public before. Speaking to Semafor, the Vice President called Schmitt “one of the Trump administration’s most valuable allies on Capitol Hill,” crediting his relationships in Washington and his grasp of what Republican voters actually want from their leaders.
Schmitt currently serves as vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee and came to the Senate after years as Missouri’s attorney general — a job he used to wage real legal fights against federal overreach, not just issue press releases about it.
In 2021, Schmitt jointly led a coalition of 10 states challenging the Biden administration’s COVID vaccine mandate for federal contractors. That lawsuit put him on the front lines of the resistance to government-imposed medical coercion — which is exactly the kind of record that resonates with an America First base that watched federal agencies weaponize pandemic policy against ordinary Americans who simply wanted to make their own medical decisions.
And Schmitt did not stop there. He spent his time as attorney general challenging alleged government censorship and advancing the constitutional principle that the state has no business making medical choices for free citizens.
The Larger 2028 Picture Behind the Buzz
The speculation kicks off unusually early in part because the Republican succession question after President Donald Trump remains genuinely unsettled — and that ambiguity creates space for names like Schmitt’s to surface.
Vance carries real institutional advantages into any 2028 contest. He has political advisers already in place, has raised serious money — including a reported $4.2 million at a single Silicon Valley event — and has built the kind of loyalty network that takes years to assemble. Earlier this year, Trump privately signaled to aides that he sees Vance as his preferred successor, according to Axios reporting, describing him as earning the position.
But the race is not a formality. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has drawn his own speculation, and Trump spent months entertaining the possibility of a joint Vance-Rubio ticket without specifying who should top it. Rubio told a Colombian broadcaster recently, “I’m not a candidate for anything right now,” and has made clear privately that if Vance runs, he supports him. Still, some Republicans gravitating toward a more traditional foreign policy posture see Rubio as an alternative lane.
Schmitt’s emergence reflects something different. His name does not represent an alternative to Vance — it represents Vance’s own thinking about who would strengthen his eventual ticket.
Vance has not formally announced a 2028 bid. Two years is a long time in politics. But the infrastructure, the fundraising, and now the running-mate speculation all point in one direction.
Why Schmitt Fits the America First Model
Beyond the personal relationship with Vance, Schmitt’s record on the Senate floor makes the case for his appeal.
Schmitt managed the president’s spending cuts bill on the Senate floor in 2025 and participated in the negotiations over Trump’s major tax and spending package, according to Semafor. Those are not ceremonial roles. A first-term senator does not land that kind of floor responsibility without earning the trust of both the White House and leadership — and without delivering results.
His record as Missouri attorney general is equally relevant. Schmitt spent years going after Biden administration policies in court, challenging what he described as government censorship, and leading multi-state coalitions to resist federal overreach on vaccine mandates. The bodily autonomy argument he made at the state level as attorney general — that Americans have the right to make their own medical decisions without government coercion — is exactly the kind of principled record the Make America Healthy Again movement recognizes and respects.
At a press conference during the height of the mandate fights, Schmitt did not mince his position. “Using fear is good — that is what every tyrant in the history of the world, and every dictator in the history of the world, has ever said to accumulate, aggregate, and maintain power,” he told reporters, adding that he refused to see Missouri become “some futuristic, dystopian, biomedical security state.”
That kind of language is not crafted by a consultant. It comes from a senator who actually believed what he was fighting for.
And that track record — substance over symbolism, constitutional principle over procedural convenience — is precisely what fits the template Vance would want standing next to him on a 2028 ticket.
Conservative commentator Matt Gaetz wrote in response to the Axios report that he “would support any ambition of Senator Schmitt.” Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, called Schmitt a “rockstar.” Those are not neutral data points. They reflect a conservative grassroots that has watched Schmitt do the work over years, not just talk about it.
Conservative communications strategist Dan Rene told the Daily Mail that he sees Schmitt as “an interesting candidate because he understands technology and has authentic and authoritative insight into where AI, communications, and the economy are headed.” That forward-looking assessment matters in a Republican Party that increasingly has to grapple with the economic disruption that rapid AI deployment will bring to American workers — a threat serious enough that even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned it could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within a few years.
But the former Senate GOP aide quoted by the Daily Mail offered the sharpest observation of all: “The allure of the VP nominee is often times not what they bring to the table but what they don’t do for the ticket.” The aide added simply: “You don’t want headaches.”
Schmitt’s record does not come loaded with the kind of establishment baggage that drags down a ticket. He is not associated with the pre-Trump Republican Party’s posture on amnesty for illegal aliens, globalist trade deals that hollowed out American manufacturing, or the neoconservative endless-war foreign policy that drained American blood and treasure across two decades. He fought the COVID mandates that the same Republican establishment largely went along with. He managed Trump’s legislative agenda on the Senate floor when it counted.
The question of who stands next to Vance in 2028 is one that will evolve considerably before any decision gets made. But the Axios report signals that Vance is already thinking seriously about it — and that Schmitt’s combination of legal toughness, legislative utility, and America First credibility has put him in a very small group of names the Vice President actually trusts.
That is not a minor thing. Vance knows exactly what he is looking for. And right now, Eric Schmitt fits the description.
Sources: Axios; Zerohedge; Daily Mail; Semafor
