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JD VANCE’S POLITICAL OPERATION is growing increasingly annoyed by what it sees as a brewing plot to sabotage the vice president’s chances of winning the 2028 GOP presidential nomination, according to aides familiar with the situation.
The efforts to undermine Vance have largely been confined to broadsides on X and whisper networks behind the scenes. But they’ve grown significant enough to spark paranoia inside the Vance network, which—despite public posturing to the contrary—is gaming out what a presidential primary might look like.
“Do you think we’re fucking stupid?” a Vance ally told me, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking. To describe the effort, playing out partly in public and partly behind the scenes, this source used the term “op”—short for operation, the preferred nomenclature for the terminally online who see digital manipulation everywhere. “Obviously it is [an op]. We’re not a bunch of fucking retards.”
The concerns over the nascent anti-Vance effort provide an early indication of how intense Republican infighting will be in the party’s post-Trump future. As a sign of how seriously the effort is being taken, another Trump world source familiar with the so-called op described the plan as...
