Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy has a very specific standard for entering the 2028 presidential race: the field has to be full of goobers. Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, Kennedy told host Kristen Welker that while he currently intends to run for re-election to his Senate seat, he would consider a White House bid if he concluded he could no longer be effective in Congress, and if the Republican primary looked like a real clown show.
“On my side of the aisle, if a bunch of goobers run and one of the goobers might win, and I think I can do a better job, I would consider running,” Kennedy said. He also reached deep into the classic country catalog for inspiration, quoting the Judds’ “Why Not Me” to explain his thinking. Because nothing says presidential gravitas quite like a Naomi Judd lyric on a Sunday morning news program.
The Goober Primary and the Vance Question
When Welker pressed Kennedy on whether Vice President JD Vance would be among the potential candidates he is sizing up, the senator declined to take the bait. “I’m not going to talk about another potential candidate. I’m just not there yet,” he said. Smart move: never name the goobers out loud before you have to. Kennedy, who turns 75 next month, also acknowledged that if he ran and won, he would become the third oldest person to enter the Oval Office, behind President Donald Trump and Joe Biden. At this rate, the age record is going to need its own bracket.
Kennedy has spent the past month barnstorming for Republican incumbents and candidates across states likely to matter in 2028, and he made clear he answers to nobody’s political operation but his own. “I have my own political operation. I don’t take orders from my leadership. I do it my way,” he said. Frank Sinatra would approve. He was also asked about John Kennedy 2028 presidential run context that came up earlier in the show, including President Trump’s decision to post Sen. Tom Cotton’s personal cellphone number on social media after Cotton voted against eliminating daylight saving time.
Zero to A-Hole in Three Seconds
Kennedy’s assessment of that particular presidential maneuver was, shall we say, colorful. “The president, as we know, can be sometimes, he exists loudly. He can be tempestuous. He can go from zero to a-hole in about 3 seconds,” Kennedy said, before adding that he did not think Trump should have published Cotton’s number. That is the most diplomatically Southern way anyone has ever criticized a sitting president, and it deserves some kind of award in terms of being straight-forward, the way we like it. But Kennedy knows and supports Trump in all the right ways, so he gets to make comments like that – it’s part of his brutal honesty people have grown to love.
Kennedy also weighed in on former Chicago Mayor and Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who appeared on Meet the Press before Kennedy’s segment. Emanuel was in Louisiana last week examining post-pandemic K-12 education and has said he is considering a 2028 Democratic presidential bid. Kennedy predicted Emanuel will run and offered a backhanded compliment that absolutely scorched the rest of the Democratic Party in the process.
“What I appreciate about him is that while many members of his party want to sit around and debate whether a man can breastfeed, Rahm wants to talk about important things,” Kennedy said. High praise from a man who may or may not be running against him, depending entirely on the goober situation.
