MAGA Is Done With Vance and the Replacement Is Marco Rubio

The Fermented Foods Presidency-In-Waiting

Let's start with the sauerkraut, because we have to. According to the Guardian, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gotten a number of Trump administration officials onto a fermented foods weight-loss regimen, and JD Vance is among the converts. RFK was positively glowing about the results at a Michigan event last month. "Within 20 days I lost 20 pounds," Kennedy said. "JD Vance is also on the diet and you can see how different he looks."

And here's the kicker: MS Now reports that Trump has noticed, and that Vance's slimmer profile has actually helped propel him back into the president's good graces. This is the political reality of 2026. The vice president of the United States is managing his standing in the Republican Party partly through his body mass index. We are so back.

His Own Security Detail Is Leaking on Him

It gets more embarrassing from there. A member of Vance's protective detail is currently under investigation for allegedly leaking details of the Vance family's travel demands to the press. And what demands they reportedly were: the Guardian notes that Vance allegedly asked for one of his sons to be ferried to a golf lesson via helicopter, plus last-minute chopper trips to Virginia for house-hunting.

Taxpayer-funded helicopter rides to junior's golf lessons. For the guy who wrote a whole book about the hardscrabble working-class Midwest. That book. We are talking about that book.

When your own bodyguard is apparently so fed up with you that they start whispering to reporters, you don't have an optics problem. You have a you problem.

The Fox News Pile-On

The attacks are coming from inside the house and from the house next door. The Washington Post reports that Vance has faced a coordinated barrage from within Republican ranks, driven largely by his mild, hedged, extremely cautious criticism of the Iran war and some public comments questioning whether the U.S. should put troops on the ground there.

Mild. Hedged. Cautious. That's what's getting him carved up. On a recent Joe Rogan appearance, Vance expressed some skepticism about a ground war in Iran, which in any functional political system would be described as "the minimum acceptable position for a sentient adult." Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen was not impressed. "He seems to be going off base a lot, and contradicting the president a lot in public lately, and it's not helpful," Thiessen said on air.

Vance's allies told the Post the attacks are a coordinated effort to poison his 2028 presidential chances. Whether that's true or whether Vance is just reaping the natural consequences of being the vice president in an administration that does not tolerate even the faintest whisper of independent thought is, honestly, a distinction without a difference.

And the Beneficiary Is... Marco Rubio

Here is where the story stops being funny and starts being grim. All of this chaos, all of these leaks and Fox panels and sauerkraut headlines, is benefiting exactly one person: Marco Rubio, who the Guardian reports is narrowing the gap with Vance in early 2028 Republican primary polling.

Marco Rubio. The man who has spent the better part of a decade auditioning for the role of America's most enthusiastic hawk. A guy whose foreign policy instincts could charitably be described as "what if we bombed that, too?" Rubio has reportedly positioned himself as the pro-war-with-Iran candidate in implicit contrast to Vance's occasional public hesitation, and Republican primary voters appear to be rewarding him for it.

So the choice the GOP is currently narrowing toward for 2028 is the guy who gets helicopter rides to his kid's golf lessons, or the guy who thinks skepticism about a ground war in Iran is a character flaw. Pick your poison. Or, apparently, your sauerkraut.