Rachel Maddow Fears Trump Has Jaw-Dropping Choice for Next President

MS Now host Rachel Maddow fears that President Donald Trump won’t hold an election for the next ruler of the United States, and instead will pick someone close to him for a specific reason.

On September 27, Maddow made an appearance on The Poynter Institute podcast. Host of the podcast, media critic Tom Jones, asked the cable news veteran if she thinks that once Trump leaves the White House, JD Vance will take his spot or if MAGA (Make America Great Again) will still be in charge.

She asked Jones who he thought could take up the mantle. He said that “one of his kids could have that pool,” to which Maddow put her finger up to her nose and then pointed at him, indicating he was saying exactly what she was thinking. Jones also suggested Tucker Carson or someone like him. “Nobody currently in there could do that. I don’t think JD Vance is up to it,” he said.

“I think that JD Vance is like Ted Cruz without the sex appeal,” she laughed. “I don’t see anybody being like ‘I pledge my life in sacred, trusted JD Vance.'”

“I am sort of persuaded again in this type of era that Trump does nothing surprising. Look at other men like him who have been in power, and you can predict what he’s going to do next. So far, he’s never proven me wrong,” Maddow said. “One of the archetypal things that a guy like that does, especially when he’s entered the sort of kleptocratic phase of being an authoritarian leader, when he’s enriching his family to the tune of billions of dollars over a mere period of months in office.”

“Once they’ve sort of stolen that much money from the public trust, it becomes, typically, important for guys like that to ensure that somebody from their family assumes power after them. Simply, so the family can keep their ill-gotten gains and not have them either taken or seized as part of a prosecution.”

“So, if you are a corrupt leader who is using your hold on power to basically shake down your country for basically hundreds of millions and/or billions of dollars you know that the carousel stops turning at some point, and it may just be that he dies in office, or get gets turfed out somewhere, but to the extent that he is trying to build family wealth, and he’s got his son-in-law and his sons on his kleptocratic train. If he wanted them to not end up in jail or prosecuted or not have their ill-gotten gains prosecuted and potentially taken over, he’s got to make sure that the next president is also a Trump,” she continued.

Maddow went on to say that she thinks he will try something like that, but it would have to be done by force, and she doesn’t imagine anybody willingly voting for his sons. “I feel like that’s the way his mind is working, but we’ll have to see,” Maddow said.

The reporter ended by saying that she believes that in 10 years people won’t want to admit they voted for Trump and the MAGA movement will have died out.

Trump has five children from three marriages — Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, from his first marriage with Ivana; Tiffany with his second wife, Marla Maples; and Barron with his current wife, Melania.