MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow has laid out her theory on how and why Donald Trump may try to be succeeded by one of his children.
Speaking on “The Poynter Report Podcast,” Maddow said the president “really is an archetype” of an authoritarian leader and that you can “look at the way that other guys like him have behaved in power in order to understand what he’s going to do next, and so far he’s never proven me wrong.”
One “archetypal” behavior of such a leader, she argued, emerges when they’ve “entered the kleptocratic phase” and enriched their family “to the tune of billions of dollars over a mere period of months in office.”
At that point, Maddow said, it becomes important “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.”
Corrupt leaders “know that the carousel stops turning at some point,” she continued.
It could be that father-of-five Trump “dies in office or he gets turfed out somewhere,” said Maddow. “But to the extent that he’s trying to build family wealth, and he’s got his son-in-law and each of his sons, and I guess Barron too, I don’t know, all on this kleptocratic train. If he wants them to not end up in jail or prosecuted or having their ill-gotten gains investigated and potentially taken over, he’s got to make sure that the next president is also a Trump.”
It’s why “you see so many sons of dictators become dictators around the world, and so I think that he will try something like that,” she added.
“I think that’s something that would effectively have to be done kind of by force,” said Maddow. “I don’t imagine anybody willingly voting for Eric or the other one, or the other one, or the other one. I think that’s probably the way his mind is working, so we’ll have to see.”
Currently, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are thought to be the front-runners to become the GOP’s 2028 presidential nominee.
Per Maddow’s thinking, though, it could mean a President Don Jr., President Ivanka, President Eric, President Tiffany or President Barron instead.
Watch from the 17:30 mark here: