The 2026 midterms may be right around the corner, but the rumors about who will run for president in 2028 continue to swirl.
On the Democrat side, former vice president – and three-time loser – Kamala Harris is leading the RealClearPolitics average by nearly 10 points over California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is in third, followed close behind by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
While AOC humiliated herself on the world stage at the Munich Security Conference in February when she couldn’t answer a basic question about the U.S. policy towards Taiwan, a new report suggests she is now quietly laying the groundwork for 2028 with a nationwide tour through key states. At one of the stops on said tour, the “Squad” member did her best (read: cringiest) Harris impersonation.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by National Review’s Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke to discuss AOC’s ambitions and what it means for the next presidential election.
Unofficial National Tour
Axios reported over the weekend that while Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t officially decided whether to run for president, she is “making new moves toward a possible White House bid” with the launch of a “national tour.”
The outlet noted that AOC isn’t calling it such, but she has spent a lot of time on the road in May. She “rallied voters in Philadelphia” for a competitive Dem primary and spoke about voting rights in Montgomery, Alabama.
During a trip to Atlanta, she addressed the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), met with Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter at the King Center, and visited Morehouse School of Medicine. This week, Axios reported she will be in Montana to campaign for congressional candidate Sam Forstag.
All the while, the four-term congresswoman, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, has “rolled out several endorsements in races across the country” and attended “meetings with Democratic Party powerbrokers.”
The Accent
Megyn joked that AOC has seemingly spent time everywhere but her district in recent months, but it was her stop at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Mother’s Day that really got her attention.
Speaking in front of a predominantly black audience, Ocasio-Cortez channeled her inner Kamala Harris to invoke her best – and most inauthentic – preacher accent. “I’m here today, brothers and sisters, with a simple message,” she began. “We stand together, and we are not going back… What happens to Georgia happens to New York. What happens to Tennessee happens to California. What happens to Louisiana happens to all of us, Ebenezer, because this is America.”
“We are not divided by state. We are united by our humanity and common citizenship. Because no man can grant us our humanity. No law can erase it. No king, no system, and no president can strip it away, Ebenezer,” she bellowed in a halting cadence. “Because it is not given by man, it is ordained by God. Thank you, Ebenezer Church, and Happy Mother’s Day.”
Lowry joked that it has become “inevitable” that non-black politicians campaigning in black churches talk that way, and Cooke agreed. “I just spent a week in the Deep South, and… it is quite tempting to start talking like the people around you because it’s such a lilting way of communicating,” he admitted. “But it is also ridiculous… I really think that people who aren’t African Americans in church should try and avoid slipping into sounding like African Americans in church… I don’t know what it is that infects Democrats when they enter a church, that they suddenly become that.”
2028 Predictions
With that said, both Lowry and Cooke fully expect AOC to run in 2028, and Cooke believes this tour through black communities might be an attempt to make inroads into a very important demographic of Democrat voters.
“I actually think that perhaps one reason she did do this is because it might be her biggest problem, gaining African American voters,” he explained. “If you look at the last few years of Democratic primaries, [African American] Democrats have been dispositive; they’re the ones who have decided who the nominee is… But they have also been more moderate. They saved the party from Bernie Sanders in 2020 and they revivified Joe Biden, who looked to see if he was done.”
Since Ocasio-Cortez’s ideology aligns more closely with her Vermont comrade than the former president, Cooke posited she has some work to do. “The wing of the party that AOC represents is the Bernie Sanders wing… and I would be surprised if there was a mass uprising… of African American Democrats in her favor,” he said. “Perhaps she knows that, and perhaps she is trying to change that by going to their church.”
If that’s the case, there are likely many more sermon-style stump speeches in AOC’s future and Cooke had a pro tip for the congresswoman. “It was quite funny, wasn’t it, when she was just speaking because she got some parts of the tone and the intonation and the pattern right, but she couldn’t say ‘Ebenezer’ right,” he noted. “She kept adding the ‘R’ on the end, so she ended up sounding almost Irish or… she’d go ‘arrr’ like a pirate.”
“So, she hasn’t quite got it,” he quipped. “She is not quite there.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Cooke and Lowry by tuning in to episode 1,325 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.