Not even Donald Trump is ready to make a fearless forecast for 2028.
The president, 79, played it safe when prodded about Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an interview with The New York Times.
Both officials top the list of names being floated as possible heirs to MAGAworld even after Rubio, 54, insisted that he will not seek the presidency if his best friend Vance, 41, decides to go for it.
Trump told the Times that it was “far too early” to start thinking about which candidate he will support in the 2028 Republican presidential primary.
Asked what it would take for Vance to secure his endorsement, Trump replied: “We have three years and one month left, but he’s doing a great job.”
“Marco is doing a great job,” he added.
The president also made clear that he was equally reliant on both of his top officials.
“I don’t want to do that, but they do have different—they have great strengths, but somewhat different, but they’re great. They’re both doing a great job,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier with either.”
In November, Vance played it cool when pressed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity about his thoughts on 2028.
“Whenever I think about that, I try to put it out of my head and remind myself, ‘The American people elected me to do a job right now, and my job is to do it.’ If you start getting distracted and focused on what comes next, I think it actually makes you worse at the job you have,” he said.
“We’re gonna do everything that we can to win the midterms, and then after that, I’m gonna sit down with the president of the United States and talk to him about it, but let’s focus on the now,” he went on.
That interview came days after Politico revealed that Rubio had been privately telling his confidants that it’s “very clear” Vance will become the Republican nominee “if he wants to be.”
“He will do anything he can just to support the vice president in that effort,” one person close to Rubio told the outlet.
Another added, “No one expects Marco to resign from the Cabinet and start taking potshots at the sitting vice president. Beyond that, they’re friends.”
Politico earlier reported that Vance and Rubio had become each other’s sounding boards in the West Wing, thanks in part to their offices being “literally feet apart.”
“I’m not sure anyone would run against those two,” Trump said of the two officials in October.
Rubio, for his part, has been Trump’s go-to man for a wide variety of issues. In addition to being secretary of state, he also serves as national security adviser and as acting U.S. archivist. When the Trump administration began dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development last year, Rubio briefly served as its chief. His latest assignment from the president is to oversee the U.S. takeover of Venezuela.
A source close to the White House thinks a win-win scenario could still be in the cards.
The expectation, the insider told Politico in November, “is JD as [nominee] and Rubio as VP.”
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