Secretary of State Marco Rubio was filling in at the White House press briefing on Tuesday when a correspondent for a Christian television network asked him to deliver a hopeful vision for America. Rubio didn’t hesitate.
“We want it to continue to be the place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything,” Rubio said. “Ours is a story of perpetual improvement. Each generation has left the next generation of Americans freer, more prosperous, safer, and that is our goal as well.”
The clip went viral, helped along in part by Rubio’s own social media account, which remixedthe sound bite with dramatic music and footage of him and President Donald Trump. The line about “each generation,” played over a montage showing former president Ronald Reagan, Trump and Rubio in order, had the distinct feeling of a campaign launch.
Elon Musk, the Republican megadonor who in the past has been critical of Rubio — and enthusiastic about Vice President JD Vance — promoted the clip. Alumni of his earlier campaigns said Rubio’s response struck them as almost identical to his 2015 presidential announcement, which emphasized people overcoming “the circumstances of their birth” to make each generation freer, safer and more prosperous.
The sensation that Rubio stirred added to a sense among Republicans — Washington professionals and some voters alike — that he is gaining an upper hand politically over Vance, his chief presumptive rival for the party’s next presidential nomination, even as Rubio previously pledged to back a Vance 2028 run.
“Are we going to pretend like that’s not a presidential candidate?” asked Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist who co-hosts the conservative “Ruthless” podcast, after playing the clip of Rubio in the briefing room. “It’s kind of hard to ignore, at some point, that this guy is becoming a thing, that he’s larger than maybe even this administration had conceived of.” Vance will be “very hard to beat,” and there’s a strong case to be made for his candidacy, co-host John Ashbrook replied, “but the reality is there’s a race on.”
People close to Rubio and the White House said the secretary of state is not angling for an edge and has no campaign in waiting, that he is just being himself and doing his job.
At the same time, some people close to Trump acknowledged privately to The Washington Post that an organic groundswell of support can turn into a political force, and at the moment, that force could be starting to point in Rubio’s direction. Even as 2028 remains a forbidden subject in the West Wing, it’s no secret among White House staff that Rubio’s stock has risen.
The growing media buzz surrounding Rubio comes as Vance has sought to carve out his own higher-profile portfolio in recent weeks. He led the U.S. negotiations with Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan, last month — as Rubio kept his distance — that ultimately did not result in a deal. And he is leading a new task force to root out fraud in federal benefits. Vance leads in early polls of the potential 2028 GOP field, but his overall approval ratings have fallen alongside Trump’s as most Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the Iran war and the economy.
Trump has repeatedly declined opportunities to anoint Vance his successor — a phenomenon that people close to him said reflects less on Vance’s standing than on Trump’s preference for suspense and keeping himself at the center of the action. He has effusively praised Rubio’s job performance.
“I think he’s going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in history,” Trump told reporters on March 9. The president has also commended Vance, saying in May that he “is doing a fantastic job.”
Rubio’s stint at the briefing room came because the White House’s communications team had asked him to step in for press secretary Karoline Leavitt for the first briefing she was away for maternity leave. It was a rare job for a secretary of state, but the first of what a White House official said would likely be a series of Cabinet members filling in during briefings in Leavitt’s absence, Vance included.
Two days before Rubio’s briefing, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, a longtime close adviser to the president, posted a video of Rubio deejaying dance music at a family wedding over the weekend — a clip that was also widely shared and served as inspiration for Scavino later posting an AI-generated video of Rubio deejaying in the press briefing room.
Even some of the vice president’s longtime supporters are recognizing that the secretary of state appears to be having a moment.
“Rubio is not my first choice, but nobody can deny how impressive he has been in public,” Rod Dreher, a conservative writer and longtime ally of Vance, told The Post after posting a comment praising Rubio’s briefing room appearance — and saying Rubio has “a good chance of being the next president.” Dreher, who last spoke with Vance when he visited the vice president’s home in November, suggested Rubio had done more than Vance to confront antisemitism in the party.
Vance and Rubio, who served together in the Senate during Vance’s two-year tenure, have each said over the past year that they count each other as close friends, with Vance calling Rubio his best friend within the administration. Many of their staffers have also worked together in previous jobs, continuing to share professional and social relationships. Rubio told Vanity Fair last year that Vance would be the presidential nominee if he sought it, and that he would “be one of the first people to support him.”
Rubio more recently has remained quiet about the recent barrage of positive attention, even in private conversations. Despite some White House and administration officials chattering about Rubio’s presidential potential, “he’s not talking about it,” a person with knowledge of Rubio’s thinking said of the prospect of his running for president. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation.
Allies of Vance have privately dismissed this week’s Rubio obsession online, downplaying the idea that either man having a good news cycle will dictate their presidential ambitions, or that Rubio should be seen as a threat to Vance. People close to Vance previously told The Post that Vance has planned not to make a final decision on running in 2028 until after the birth of his fourth child in July.
In the meantime, Vance has been aggressively fundraising for the party in the midterms, building his connections with top donors. Rubio’s responsibilities — serving as secretary of state, national security adviser, acting archivist, and for a time head of the U.S. Agency for International Development — offer less space for politics, since the secretary of state traditionally stays above the domestic fray.
Rubio’s decision on how long to stay in the administration after the midterms will offer the clearest clue as to his future plans, the people close to him and the White House said. He does not have an existing political or fundraising team standing by.
Both Vance and Rubio are underwater in public opinion surveys, with Vance viewed slightly more negatively. A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found Vance’s disapproval rating at a net negative 13 points, compared with Rubio’s at net negative 7 points. Trump’s was at net negative 25 points.
In focus groups, Vance runs into the same problem that most vice presidents face of living in the president’s shadow, according to Conor Kilgore, a researcher at the Bulwark who helps conduct voter panels for the Focus Group Podcast with anti-Trump Republican strategist Sarah Longwell. Rubio, he said, has managed to shed the stigma of having opposed Trump in 2016, converting former skeptics and convincing voters he is both a team player and his own man.
“He’s a rocket,” said Kelley Koch, the former chair of the Dallas County, Iowa, Republican Party, who remains involved as a pro-Trump activist in the state. She said her view of Rubio before he joined the Trump administration was “not an overwhelming positive one,” but now she praised his “brilliance and the calm, steady hand.” Koch said, however, that she still believes Vance is the favorite to be the 2028 nominee.
On Tuesday, Vance took what was widely seen as a first step toward running for president: traveling to Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, to rally Republicans for a vulnerable swing-district House member. At Vance’s rally, Nate Bradbury, 45, of Monroe, Iowa, said he wanted to take advantage of being able to see Vance in person for the first time — but said he hopes to be able to do the same for Rubio. Bradbury said he likely won’t be swayed by an endorsement from Trump — or anyone — when he decides which Republican to back in the 2028 caucus.
“Those are my top two,” he said.
At a March Trump rally just outside Vance’s home state of Ohio, the president’s supporters expressed excitement about Rubio as a potential successor to Trump in 2028. Robert Prichard, a resident of Ashland, Kentucky, who attended the March rally with his sons, said he voted for Trump but wished that he would act more presidential. He doesn’t see that as an issue for Rubio.
“Rubio is a very presidential individual,” he said. “That’s what we need to settle everybody down. And I think if we have JD Vance, it’s going to be more of the same. Because he’s duplicate of Trump, which is a great thing as far as ideas and caring about America, but it just rubs people the wrong way.
Steve Deace, a national conservative radio host based in Iowa, declared on his show this week after meeting with Vance on Tuesday that the vice president is “the most effective messenger since Reagan.”
“I think Vance is a better standard bearer, because he’s more directly tied to Trump’s base and carrying on that legacy,” Deace told The Post on Thursday. “My preference would be Vance-Rubio. But if it’s the other way around, that’s not a terrible consolation prize.”
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