Vanity Fair’s ‘new establishment’ list names Vance as Trump ‘heir’ and Rubio as ‘spare’

Vanity Fair on Monday released its “New Establishment 2026” list and included several Trump administration officials, referring to Vice President Vance as the “MAGA heir” but naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the “MAGA spare.”

The magazine wrote Vance “had reason for optimism” following President Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, describing MAGA as “something close to trendy” with Vance as “its de facto prince.”

“‘Communion,’ Vance’s recent book about his conversion to Catholicism, allowed for a splashy media tour that brought him in front of hostile audiences like those of ‘The View,'” Vanity Fair wrote.

“Vance took some heat for embarking on that tour while in office (shouldn’t the vice president have better things to do during a war in the Middle East?), but his talk show appearances seem to have appealed to the viewer in chief: Trump, who, according to several reports, currently considers Vance his heir apparent,” the outlet added.

Vanity Fair said readers know the memes of Rubio “stone-faced on a sofa in the Oval Office, newly appointed to a role just vacated by an embarrassed or embattled official of some sort” before naming some examples of these AI-generated memes.

“Rubio’s role has afforded him vast powers over an administration that’s shaping the world at its whims,” the magazine wrote,........

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