RThe representative Ecupan Byron Donalds had just started a yacht club by the water in Naples, Florida last month when his phone did not stop vibrating. As a host of a fundraising for the representative Andy Barr, he tried to ignore the relentless flow of calls and SMS while he was getting involved in donors and was on appetizers. But then he heard a special ring reserved for a person: Donald Trump. When Donalds slipped into a back room to answer, the president announced the news to him. Trump had just approached him to be the next Governor of Florida. It changed the situation for Donalds. There was only one complication. He had not yet announced that he was running.
His political team moved quickly, filling documents and reserving him on Fox News a few nights later to officially declare his candidacy. “This is the greatest approval in politics,” he said to Time, knowing that he should capitalize on the momentum.
He also had to follow Trump. The president is only a few months old in his second term, but does not waste time shaping the future composition of the Republican Party. Familiar sources with Trump By thinking, say that he intervenes strategically in the primaries of 2026 early, in order to strengthen the young arrivals who will keep the molded gop in his image when he leaves the scene.
Donalds, 46, is not alone. Last month, Trump also approved the 39 -year -old biotechnology entrepreneur, 39, to become the next Ohio governor, making him the rating favorite to replace Governor Mike Dewine. At the same time, some of Trump’s closest allies set the foundations for other Maga. Vice-President JD Vance encouraged the 44-year-old software director Nate Morris to present herself to the American Senate in Kentucky, sources familiar with the Tell Hour issue. Since then, Morris has obtained a boost from Trump’s eldest son, Don, Jr., who welcomed him on his podcast earlier this month. While Trump Jr. refrains from approving candidates in front of his father, his embrace has often been a prelude to the GOP hopes who obtain the support of Trump. In previous cycles, he had a very influence to encourage Trump to support young insurgents of Maga such as Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, Senator Bernie Moreno de l’Ohio and Vance.
For Trump and his inner circle, it is a question of establishing the type of permanent footprint on his party which has escaped his predecessors. “President Trump will do what Obama and Bush did not do, which is to cement a lasting heritage by strengthening the next generation of leaders who share his vision for our country,” said Alex Bruesewitz, CEO of X Strategies and Trump family advisor.
Of course, Trump has long intervened in primaries. By building a social and political movement which gave him a coercive power on the GOP, he was able to punish the heretics and raise the loyalists determined to advance his program and his interests. The strategy has not always worked. A handful of his choices have lost critical races across the country mid-term in 2022. But Trump’s grip on the republican base is as strong as ever. The result is that he now cultivates the class of the Republicans whom he hopes to support Maga as a political force in the post-Trump era.
Donalds has been on Trump’s radar for years. After winning a seat in the United States in 2020, he was one of the legislators who voted against Joe Biden’s electoral victory in January 2021. Donalds then became one of Trump’s most noisy defenders at the Congress and approved him for the president in April 2023, shortly after his first act. Over time, the two have become close. On the campaign track, Trump often invited Donalds to travel with him on his private plane, nicknamed Trump Force One. They developed a strategy on how to win young black voters, a group that Donalds has targeted as a substitute for the Trump campaign. (Trump doubled the share of the votes he won with black men under the age of 45 compared to 2020.) In November, after the elections, Donalds visited Trump in Mar-A-Lago to tell him that he had planned to run for governor and asked for his approval. Trump made no promise. “Obviously, he was occupied by the transition and the inauguration,” said Donalds. But then something accelerated his decision to accelerate: Ron Desantis.
The president still seduces his former protégé for having challenged him in the 2024 elections. When he learned that the wife of the governor, Casey Desantis, was According to several Trump aids. He planned to support Donalds anyway, but posted his approval from Donalds on Truth Social when Desantis and his wife were flying to Washington DC for a meeting of the Association of Republican Governors, where they would see Trump in a few hours.
Trump evolved just as quickly with other Maga darlings like Ramaswamy, who defended and often congratulated Trump in a long presidential offer that raised his national profile. Last month, Trump approved Ramaswamy the same evening when he launched his campaign for the Ohio governor. He echoes an evening in January 2024 when Ramaswamy ended his presidential candidacy and approved Trump. It was at this time that they formed a link. Together, Trump and Ramaswamy thought about future options for the brand of the millennial fires. “We had many different possibilities that were launched,” Ramaswamy told Time.
Initially, he was going to co -reside the government’s ministry of efficiency with billionaire Elon Musk. But Ramaswamy left after Trump decided to fold the cost reduction commission into the executive power, replacing the digital service of the United States; It would have been legally forbidden to present itself to functions while it was used for the federal government. The first surveys had far Ramaswamy leading one of its potential competitors, with 61% of republican respondents ranking it as their first choice, according to a state university of Bowling Green investigation. Trump’s approval cachet still solidifies his channel to win the appointment of the GOP.
Trump and Musk making a chainsaw in the United States government, Ramaswamy argues that governors will be hugged in the years to come. “It is the idea of giving up federal power in the United States,” he said. “The center of gravity of the country’s evolution now begins in Washington, DC, but if you are patina at the place where the washer will be in a few years, it will be the states that, from health care education, will have to define policies and direct.”
Trump’s allies are still on the congress. Vance and Trump Jr. led efforts to identify and promote young national populists lined up by Trump. Until now, for 2026, they mainly focus on Morris, a businessman from Louisville and a prolific republican donor. When he was 23 years old, Morris collected $ 50,000 for the re -election campaign of George W. Bush. He is a friend and supporter of Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian who faced Trump on his prices. But he also counts Vance as a confidant and was a major donor of the campaign in 2024 of Trump. The sources indicate that the time he prepares to present himself for the headquarters of the outgoing senator Mitch McConnell, as Vance urged him to do so. Morris has made other powerful allies. He drew the attention of Trump Jr. after having recently castigated McConnell, a former leader of the Senate of the Senate and villain in the world of Trump, for having voted against the appointments of Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard. Shortly after, Trump Jr. amplified Morris on social networks and welcomed her on his popular right -wing podcast.
Morris movements come as Trump is looking for a candidate to replace McConnell. Trump told his inner circle that he did not want to support the former Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron, who has already entered the race. Trump approved Cameron for the governor in 2024, but Governor Andy Beshear defeated him easily. “He lost five points in a state that Trump carried by 30,” said one of the president’s assistants to Time. “He knows it’s not the guy.”
For Trump, it is the other part of the equation – candidates who think he can win. Part of its way to power, after all, was engineering the avoidance of GOP criticism on Capitol Hill like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and supplant them with disciples. “You must understand where the president of the president is and what he is trying to accomplish,” says Donalds. “And you support this.” Trump lieutenants are also engaged in the project. Donalds’ campaign includes several relatives Trump AIDES: Pollter Tony Fabrizio, communication consultant Danielle Alvarez and the political operator Ryan Smith. Friday, Donalds plans to officially launch his campaign in Bonita Springs, a seaside community in the state of origin of Trump, where he was particularly interested in leaving a lasting influence. “He is very deliberate here about sustainable heritage,” said a source close to Trump. “He uses the word” young “a lot by speaking of the movements he makes.”
