- Rubio has not closed the door on running in 2028.
- Vance says he will talk to Trump about running.
- Trump calls both Vance and Rubio very high intelligence.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to take sides in the debate over whether his Vice President, JD Vance, or his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, would likely be his successors in the 2028 Republican presidential campaign.
Vance, a former Republican senator from Ohio, has said he will talk to Trump about running after the November midterms.
There is also speculation among Republican insiders that Rubio, a former Florida senator who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 and lost to Trump, could seek the presidency.
Rubio has not closed the door on running in 2028, but has praised Vance as a strong potential candidate.
Trump said he “would be inclined” to back a successor when asked about Vance and Rubio during an interview with NBC Newsbut he added that he did not want to go into 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 argue, or I don’t want to use the word ‘fight’; it 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 the Republican and Democratic sides and the fields are expected to be full.
In a possible nod to Rubio, the country’s top diplomat, Trump said of the two: “I would say one is a little more diplomatic than the other.”
He called them both men of very high intelligence.
“I think there is a difference in style,” Trump said. “You know, you can see the style for yourself. But they’re both very capable. I think this: the combination of JD and Marco would be very difficult to defeat, I think. But you never know in politics, right?”
In the interview, Trump also appeared to play again with the possibility of seeking an unconstitutional third term. He had flirted with the idea last year and then abandoned the concept.
Asked if he saw “any scenario” in which he would still be president when the next president’s term begins in January 2029, Trump said: “I don’t know. It would be interesting.”
