WASHINGTON — Every now and then, in conversations with aides in the Oval Office, with friends over dinner or on the terrace of Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump pauses and rambles aloud on a topic that has quietly fascinated the Republican Party.
What do you think? JD or Marco?
According to several people close to the president, Trump asks advisers who they prefer and often comments that he could simply put Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio together on the same presidential ticket in 2028.
Trump’s advisers say he is just having fun informally “doing research” and that 2028 is far from a priority for him. Still, it’s hard for Trump to ignore that recently, the two men he refers to as “boys” have been gaining more and more visibility as the midterm elections approach.
Last week, Rubio appeared in the White House press room, sympathetically answering questions about the war in Iran — content that his team later turned into a video that looked like a campaign piece. He then traveled to Italy, appeared next to Pope Leo XIV and took a crystal football as a gift (“Wow, right”, reacted Leo, an Augustinian who took a vow of poverty, to Rubio, also a Catholic). Rubio also met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who, like the pope, was criticized by Trump for opposing the war. After that, Rubio will head to China with the president.
While Rubio struggled to captivate reporters in Washington, the White House political operation sent Vance to a factory in Des Moines, Iowa, to support a vulnerable Republican congressman, Rep. Zach Nunn. On stage, Vance launched a well-rehearsed attack on the policies of the Democratic Party and linked his distaste for them to his own changes in his political identity over the course of his life.
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“It breaks the heart of a kid who came from a family of union Democrats to realize that these days, Democrats seem to care more about gender transition than about you getting more of your hard-earned money,” Vance told the audience.
These parallel appearances, full of phrases with viral potential, fueled new speculation about whether Rubio could, at some point, challenge Vance — considered the favorite — in a dispute for the Republican nomination for president. According to several people close to both, Vance and Rubio, who are friends, do not want to be seen as direct rivals in the 2028 race. Others say it is too early to know how the race will play out, before seeing how the Republican Party will fare in this year’s midterm elections.
“They both understand the moment, right?” Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri, said in an interview this year about the relationship between Vance and Rubio. “It’s a historic return of a president who was out of office, who came back, and a unique coalition that, you know, made it possible.”
He added: “I think it drives them to work together, beyond the personal friendship they have.”
The White House did not comment for this report.
According to reports, the two actually get along well. It’s not uncommon to see them laughing together at official events. When they are side by side, they talk about sports and family. Both are also well aware of the movement surrounding their public images and their possible futures.
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Rubio, who serves as national security advisor and held the role of “chief archivist” for almost a year, in addition to being the country’s top diplomat, often shows friends and colleagues on his cell phone the memes that circulate about him — especially those that joke about the fact that he holds several positions, according to a person who has witnessed the scene.
The memes abound and imagine Rubio in a variety of new roles depending on Trump’s decisions. On the internet, he has been cast as Kristi Noem, the former secretary of Homeland Security; as president of Venezuela; and, how Trump ordered the Pentagon to release files on UFOs, like Elliott, the boy from the movie “ET”.
Rubio’s allies say this ubiquity is a sign that he could broaden the base of the MAGA movement beyond Trump’s most ardent constituency at a time when the Republican Party faces strong headwinds in the economy, the conduct of war and aggressive tactics to curb immigration.
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“He’s a politician who can appeal to a lot of Republicans who supported Trump but were never exactly excited about him,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who worked on Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaign. “He’s very good, in both English and Spanish, at constructing an argument and presenting it persuasively to voters.”
Rubio has also stated that he would leave the scene if Vance decided to run: “If JD Vance runs for President, he will be our candidate, and I will be one of the first people to support him,” he told the magazine Vanity Fair in an interview last year.
In any case, the favorite for the nomination remains Vance. He is unpopular, with an approval rating of 35% in the most recent poll. Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos. But, according to a Pew Research Center survey this year, Vance is much better known to American voters than most other figures in the Trump administration — only Trump himself and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, are more familiar to the public.
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According to Pew, 75% of Republican voters have a favorable view of Vance, compared to 64% who have a favorable view of Rubio. And 19% of Republican voters say they have never heard of the Secretary of State.
Still, there are signs that part of this public is increasingly curious about Rubio. Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist, wrote in the magazine The Atlanticin April, that voters said they were impressed with Rubio’s ability to accumulate several roles at the same time. In other words, all those memes might be working.
“The first line of reasoning among Rubio fans is something like this: Since he has so many different titles, he must be competent,” Longwell wrote, based on the weekly focus groups with voters she conducts. “Another reason voters seem to like Rubio: They see him as the ‘adult in the room.’”
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But Vance, direct heir to the president’s political base, is the only member of the government who can run an election campaign while helping Trump govern. In Iowa, the vice president met privately with influential political leaders, including Jeff Kaufmann, the state’s historic party president.
Even though he spoke out against Trump’s decision to attack Iran, Vance now needs to defend the president, who took a deeply unpopular step with voters and contributed to rising energy prices. During the visit to the factory in Des Moines, he recalled that two Iowans were killed by an Iranian drone attack on a military base in Kuwait in March.
Another complicating factor for both of them — and, in fact, for anyone who decides to run — is Trump himself. Never averse to the spotlight, Trump demonstrated, even at the time of the program “The Apprentice”, a certain predilection for sitting behind a table while contestants sabotaged each other in the fight for a prize.
“The president understandably expects complete loyalty from a vice president,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Mike Pence, Vance’s predecessor. “But in my experience, he doesn’t tend to set his deputy up for political success later.”
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