Vice President J.D. Vance will be part of GOP's future "for a long time," Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley told Newsmax on Wednesday.
During an interview broadcast before Sunday's Super Bowl, Trump refused to anoint Vance as his successor and preferred choice for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.
Whatley, appearing in the studio Wednesday morning with "Wake Up America" co-hosts Sharla McBride and Marc Lotter, addressed Vance's future in the party.
"He certainly is going to be part of the future for this party for a long time, but we also have a great bench," Whatley said. "When you look at who we have in the Senate. Look at our governors. Look at who we have in the House. Look who we have in the Cabinet.
"We have a lot of people that are very, very capable of being leaders throughout the country. I love the bench that we have right now."
Whatley compared the GOP's bench to that of the Democratic Party.
"The party is absolutely imploding because they didn't just have bad messengers, they had a bad message," he said. "And right now, as long as the Republican Party is going to be focused on Donald Trump's agenda, the America First agenda, then we're going to continue to listen to the voters. We're going to put solutions on the table for them, and we're going to continue to win."
Whatley said that the RNC's immediate focus is backing the president.
"Right now we are doing everything we can to support the president and this agenda because this is an American agenda," he said. "It's a common sense agenda. We want to see these Cabinet nominees get moved through and then we're already into the '26 election cycle.
"So we know that the main question the president is going to have is a two-year presidency or a four-year presidency, based on what happens with the elections in the House and the Senate. We're going to be ready to hit the ground running."
Whatley also discussed other topics, including:
- Trump's high approval ratings: "It's not surprising, right? The president made it very clear throughout the course of the campaign, this is what we're going to do when we get into office. And he has hit the ground running."
- On New York's top court being set to consider whether noncitizens can vote in New York City elections: "The New York Constitution is very clear. You have to be a citizen to vote in New York. This is not a surprise that we're going to see New York City try to circumvent that 850,000 people that they want to vote in this election, that are noncitizens."
- On the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): "The American people voted for this, right? We overwhelmingly want to see changes made to the government, and the fact that the DOGE team and Elon Musk are trying to save Americans money and trying to make sure that we're going to have an efficient government is a fairly novel concept. But this is exactly what the American people voted for."
- On the importance of seeing Trump's Cabinet nominees confirmed: "Very simply put, people are policy. And this is a policy agenda that the president brought to the table, and you have to have good people to be able to implement it."
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