Vice President JD Vance has been left as the lone non-interventionist voice in President Trump’s cabinet following the resignation of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and is privately weighing whether to abandon a 2028 presidential run, multiple sources told the Daily Mail.

Gabbard announced Friday that she would step down effective June 30, citing her husband Abraham Williams’s diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. But West Wing officials told the Daily Mail her departure was inseparable from a deeper rupture inside the administration over the Iran war.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, had clashed with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and was frequently absent from Oval Office deliberations on military action in Iran and Venezuela. She was the fourth woman to leave Trump’s cabinet this term, following the firings of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi and the resignation of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Principal Deputy Aaron Lukas will serve as acting director.

Her exit leaves Vance without his most senior internal ally against the war. “Vance is a non-event in the West Wing,” a source close to the president told the Daily Mail.

The vice president privately urged Trump in February to authorize a limited, punitive strike on Iran rather than the full-scale operation that followed, warning that a wider war risked regional chaos and heavy casualties, according to The New York Times. Trump has since acknowledged the rift, saying his vice president was “maybe less enthusiastic” at the outset and “philosophically a little bit different” on the strike decision.

As Vance’s standing has slipped, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s has risen. Rubio is now helping to plan a U.S. invasion of Cuba while the vice president flounders in stalled peace talks with Tehran.

“Rubio has more mojo than Vance. The president listens to him,” a White House insider told the Daily Mail. “Vance is out of step and has been for a long time.”

Another source described the philosophical gulf between MTrump and his vice president in starker terms. “The president has made it very clear in recent months that he doesn’t abide by this strong, silent Gary Cooper style approach to foreign policy. He’s loud, he’s active. These guys prefer to speak softly and carry a big stick, but Trump speaks loudly and carries a massive cannon.”

Sources said Vance, 41, is now considering whether to sit out 2028 entirely rather than carry the political weight of the Iran war into a primary. Allies have floated alternative timelines that would let him re-emerge in 2032 or 2036.

A source close to the vice president pushed back hard on that strategy. “Anyone who wants to be a viable nominee for president has a very small window. And if you don’t go when that window is open, most likely it never opens up again.” A 2032 run would also pit Vance against a sitting incumbent — a contest only Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump have lost in the past half-century.

“Age-wise he’d be young enough,” the source said. “But momentum-wise, there’d be a shinier penny on the street.”

The White House insider cautioned that Rubio’s ascendance could prove short-lived. By championing an unpopular war, the secretary of state risks burning through political capital with both the MAGA base and the broader public, leaving open the possibility that the cabinet’s center of gravity could shift again before 2028.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)