Trump is fading and the race to replace him has begun ...Middle East

On Friday night, during his acerbic appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, President Donald Trump decided to tweak his audience by wearing a “Trump 2028” baseball cap.

Not for the first time, the White House insists he was only joking about the possibility of seeking an unconstitutional third term in office. Even though the trademark red headgear remains available for purchase in the White House gift shop, early runners and riders in the Republican race to inherit the presidency from Trump are jostling for position, assuming the President will eventually step aside.

In recent days, none has made the running more baldly than Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Rubio and his backers believe that he currently enjoys that most precious of political commodities: momentum. With Vice President JD Vance damaged by a series of missteps this year that included his failed efforts to help former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán secure re-election, then – days later – his inability in Islamabad to negotiate peace with Iran, Rubio now hopes to emerge as the clear frontrunner in the nascent stages of the leadership battle.

This month, he has engaged in a series of bold moves to cement his rise among Trump’s Make America Great Again grassroots supporters.

On 13 July, he published a searing opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal announcing that the Department of State is actively “dismantling the International Criminal Court” (ICC).

He argued that the ICC, which the US has neither joined nor recognised, is seeking to become “a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the US and other sovereign states – and to prosecute and arrest our citizens”.

Rubio accused the court’s judges of “interfering with American military and law enforcement operations” by launching probes of their legality, said the United States will never agree to “rule by a self-appointed priesthood of ‘international law’”, and vowed to dismantle the ICC “brick by brick if necessary”.

For Rubio, there is no downside to attacking the ICC, nor in continuing to sanction its senior figures. The US is not a party to the Rome Statute of 1998 which created the ICC, and successive presidents from both parties have rejected its mandate. Earlier this year, Trump claimed “I don’t need international law”, and went on to assert that his power is only limited by his “own morality”.

This week’s dismissal of ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan over allegations of sexual misconduct will only embolden Rubio’s determination to try and take the institution down.

Rubio has also launched a new war on “political terrorism” by presiding over an effort to launch a global assault on the far left. Timed to coincide with Trump’s repeated recent claims that his Democratic Party opponents are “communists” and “far-left radicals” who pose an existential threat to the future of the country, Rubio claimed the country’s counter-terrorism activities had “a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left”.

He fumed that “the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy”, and at times echoing language previously used to root out American communists during the McCarthy era, claimed that America is facing “a new wave of this old evil”.

Again, easy meat for the Republican faithful, many of whom believe that the anti-fascist movement “antifa” is the root of all evil in the US.

Rubio’s stewardship of US policy towards Cuba may also prove useful to him, depending on the outcome of the current stand-off with the island’s government backed by former president Raúl Castro, the 95-year-old brother of Fidel, now wanted by the US on conspiracy charges.

Castro could follow another of Rubio’s long-standing enemies, captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás  Maduro, into a US courtroom.

But the Secretary of State’s way to the Republican leadership will not run easy for as long as the US war on Iran remains unresolved. Vance can at least point to the fact that he initially expressed reservations about the conflict, and then – faced with Trump’s intransigence – counselled him to “go big and go fast” in order to avoid the kind of “forever” war that now appears to be looming.

Vance has indicated that he plans to talk to Trump about the party’s future leadership after November’s midterm elections. Currently, he retains a 10-point lead over Rubio in the latest polling of Republican voters, but the Secretary of State is steadily closing that gap.

Other potential runners and riders include libertarian Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and outgoing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. There has even been talk of a possible presidential run by Donald Trump Jr, currently running the Trump family business alongside his brother Eric.

Anyone hoping to succeed Trump atop the Republican Party must engage in a careful ballet, given the President’s continuing intimations that he still covets his own run in 2028. The baseball hat that he wore on Saturday might only be a joke, but any potential rivals must tread warily for fear of enraging him.

Vance and Rubio can both see in Trump a President who is fading and failing to turn around his own disastrous approval ratings. Yet he remains the most powerful figure in Republican politics, as evidenced by his capacity earlier this year to persuade voters to deselect lawmakers he deemed traitors.

The Vice President and the Secretary of State need to box clever to avoid ending up on that list.

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