- Rubio has not closed the door on his candidacy in 2028.
- Vance says he will talk with Trump about running.
- Trump calls Vance and Rubio highly intelligent.
President Donald Trump refused Wednesday to take sides in the debate over whether his vice president, JD Vance, or his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, would most likely be his successor in the 2028 Republican presidential campaign.
Vance, a former Republican senator from Ohio, said he would talk with Trump about running after the November midterm elections.
There is also speculation among Republican insiders that Rubio, a former Florida senator who ran for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016 and lost to Trump, might run for president.
Rubio did not close the door on a 2028 bid, but praised Vance as a strong potential candidate.
Trump said he would be “inclined” to support a successor when asked about Vance and Rubio during an interview with NBC Newsbut added that he did not wish to broach the subject now.
“We have three years left. I don’t want to, you know, I have two people who are doing a great job. I don’t want to have an argument, or I don’t want to use the word ‘fight,’ that wouldn’t be a fight. But look, JD is fantastic and Marco is fantastic,” Trump said.
Trump has often said the two men should run together on the same ticket. The 2028 election will feature a wide-open race on both Republican and Democratic sides, and crowded battlegrounds are expected.
In a possible nod to Rubio, the country’s top diplomat, Trump said of the two men: “I would say one is slightly more diplomatic than the other.”
He called them both men of great intelligence.
“I think there’s a difference in style,” Trump said. “You know, you can see the style yourself. But they’re both very competent. I think this: the combination of JD and Marco would be very hard to beat, I think. But you never know in politics, right?”
In the interview, Trump also appeared to toy with the possibility of running for an unconstitutional third term. He flirted with the idea last year, before abandoning the concept.
Asked if he envisioned “a scenario” in which he would still be president when the next presidential term begins in January 2029, Trump replied: “I don’t know. That would be interesting.”
