Analysis: When will Trump let Republican hopefuls make moves to succeed him? | CNN Politics

A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. We recently assessed the large field of Democrats who could run for president in 2028 and are already making moves in that direction. So it’s a good time to see what’s happening on the Republican side of things. What we know is that the next president won’t be Donald Trump. The president, not yet to the halfway mark of his second term, has said he won’t try to test the Constitution’s ban on his running for a third term. But he also won’t want to pass the torch any time soon. While the conventional wisdom is that Vice President JD Vance will step in to be Trump’s heir, Trump has made his career by shattering conventional wisdom. There are plenty of other Republicans out there who would like to be president, including Trump’s ambitious Secretary of State Marco Rubio. I spoke with Steve Contorno, a CNN senior reporter who covers Republicans, to get his sense for when and how a Republican race could get underway. Our conversation, edited for length, is below. WOLF: Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image. He says that he will abide by the Const