Donald Trump has a new pop quiz for confidants in his orbit.
The 79-year-old president is privately asking his advisers whether JD Vance or Marco Rubio should inherit the MAGA mantle and run for president in 2028.
Trump poses the question casually but increasingly frequently, pitting the vice president, 41, and the secretary of state, 54, against each other, Axios reports, citing several sources.
The president favors Vance, according to the outlet, but he hasn’t made up his mind and seems content to keep both men guessing.
“Vance-Rubio is the president’s dream ticket—and to be clear, that’s Vance on top,” said a Trump adviser whom the president recently polled on his succession scenarios.
The adviser added, “But would Trump be happy with a Rubio-Vance ticket? Absolutely.”
Trump, who has threatened to run for a third term in office, is fixated on his legacy as the final midterms of his second presidency near, according to Axios.
Publicly, however, he has maintained he’s in no rush to choose a successor, stressing that his time in office is far from up.
“That’s something I don’t have to worry about now,” he said last week, before declining to give Vance or Rubio his wholehearted backing for the second time this month.
“I’ve got three years to go, so it’s something I don’t have to worry (about). JD is fantastic, and Marco is. They’re both fantastic, I think, really.”
He proceeded to heap praise on Rubio for his address at the Munich Security Council, saying, “And I think Marco did a great job in Munich.”
Trump doubled down at the inaugural meeting of his “Board of Peace” on Thursday.
“Marco, you really did yourself proud two days ago in Munich,” he said, adding, “Don’t do any better than you did, please. Because if you do, you’re outta here.”
As for Vance, Trump called him a “brilliant guy,” but noted, “He gets a little bit tough on occasion—we gotta slow him down on occasion. He says his mind.”
He continued, “Then we have the opposite extreme. Marco does it with a velvet glove. But it’s a kill, right? The result is the same. They do it very differently.”
Some Trump advisers theorize that the president keeps lavishing praise on Rubio, also his national security adviser, to lure him onto a ticket with Vance.
For Rubio, moving from his high-profile role, and the multiple other acting roles he juggled during the first year of the second Trump administration, to the vice presidency—a post with a notoriously thin portfolio—would be a tough step, sources who know his thinking about 2028 told Axios.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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