Vice President JD Vance is now openly breaking from President Donald Trump as the 2028 race begins, according to biographer Michael Wolff, the author whose first-term exposé revealed turmoil inside the Trump administration. In an episode of the Daily Beast’s “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast that dropped Tuesday, July 21, Wolff said the 41-year-old vice president represents the clearest case of a Republican creating separation from the 80-year-old commander in chief.
During an appearance on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show, Vance admitted the White House had been “guilty” of botching the Jeffrey Epstein files scandal, contradicting an administration still grappling with damage control. Wolff characterized that moment as Vance “basically publicly proclaiming his distance from Donald Trump.”
Republicans Eye the Exit
The vice president’s gambit will serve as a roadmap for every other contender looking toward the next election, Wolff predicted to co-host Joanna Coles. He drew a contrast with the 2024 cycle, when advisers urged then-Vice President Kamala Harris to separate from President Joe Biden after he withdrew from his reelection campaign — counsel she mostly rejected. Vance, Wolff suggested, is making the opposite choice and making it now.
The author framed Vance’s strategy as rational politics given Trump’s poll numbers. He pointed to a 37 percent approval rating, coupled with widespread dissatisfaction over how the president has handled the economy and the Iran conflict, as evidence that tying yourself to Trump carries more risk than reward for anyone with White House ambitions.
That same calculation, Wolff said, explains why Trump’s own party is starting to move “further and further away from him.” He cited resistance to the Save America Act, which the president championed but which encountered resistance from lawmakers before eventually clearing the House of Representatives on July 23. Members kept insisting they couldn’t deliver the bill, Wolff noted, a snub dressed up as legislative difficulty.
Two Forces Closing In
Trump faces twin pressures in the months ahead, Wolff told the podcast audience. The first comes from Capitol Hill, where Democrats are poised to retake the House once November’s midterm elections conclude. That takeover will transform Congress into “an incredible noose around his neck, a burden on his shoulders,” Wolff said, warning that the opposition will look for every chance to embarrass and obstruct the president — even if such attacks risk the same backlash they’ve triggered in the past.
The second source of trouble is more unexpected: Republican presidential hopefuls preparing for 2028, each one trying to carve out their own identity apart from Trump. Wolff described this phenomenon as already in motion, with grumbling from Trump supporters over Congress leaving town without acting on his agenda serving as one visible symptom of the friction.
A Hostile History With the White House
The administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wolff’s newest remarks. Its animosity toward the biographer, however, is well documented. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung has labeled Wolff a fraud and accused him of inventing material, attacks the administration has leveled at him repeatedly.
That antagonism dates to “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” Wolff’s 2018 book in which staffers reportedly portrayed the president as childlike. Wolff told interviewers at the time that aides characterized Trump as someone who “does not read, does not listen.” He also said people around the president were “afraid” — worried about their own futures and about the nation’s direction, he told PBS News.
Then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called the book “trashy tabloid fiction,” and Trump’s attorney Charles Harder tried to block its release. The effort failed, and the book became a bestseller. Before chronicling Trump’s inner circle, Wolff had contributed to New York magazine and Vanity Fair and authored “The Man Who Owns the News,” a 2008 biography of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Whether Wolff’s predictions prove accurate or amount to the fabrication the White House claims, the dynamics he outlines are hard to dispute. A president nearing the end of his tenure, an opposition party preparing to seize control and a vice president positioning himself for the next campaign — those forces don’t need a chronicler to exist. Wolff and Coles publish on YouTube three times weekly in the evening (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) and on alternate platforms three mornings per week (Wednesday, Friday, Sunday).