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Iran war elevates Marco Rubio in Trump's 2028 succession jockeying
Trump has been informally polling his circle of friends and advisers about the 2028 election that could pit some of his top administration officials against one another.
Trump has been asking Republicans whether they'd prefer Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio for president in 2028.Kay Nietfeld / dpa / picture alliance via Getty Images
In the early hours of Feb. 28, President Donald Trump and his administration joined Israel in launching a wave of strikes on Iran that would reverberate across the Middle East. That night, he was schmoozing at Mar-a-Lago with some of his top administration officials and political donors, with a pressing question: Marco or JD?
With a group of roughly 25 GOP donors, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and billionaire Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson, Trump asked the room whom they would prefer he support for president in 2028.
Attendees overwhelmingly indicated Secretary of State Marco Rubio through their cheering, according to two people who were at the event.
“It was almost unanimous for Marco,” said a person in attendance, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said the second attendee about the informal Trump poll. “It was clear, at least that night.”
Another person in the room characterized the response as more “evenly split” between Rubio and Vance.
That small gathering in Florida — Rubio’s home state — doesn’t necessarily mean that Rubio is the new favorite over Vice President JD Vance for 2028.
“The Mar-a-Lago donor crew are not JD people,” a former Trump administration official said. “He did not get picked [to be vice president] because of the Mar-a-Lago crowd. If you remember, that crowd was lobbying the president to pick Marco.”
“So, I’d say stuff like that is a bit gamed,” the former official added. “If there were a poll taken tomorrow, I’d bet JD is still up by 40 [points], or whatever it is.”
It’s not the first time Trump has quizzed those in his orbit about how he should engage in the forthcoming political fight to replace him as the Republican standard-bearer. But it’s another instance of the dynamic and an indication that the president plans to play a big role — and is taking an early interest — in the future of the party.
Trump appears to be relishing his potential to be a kingmaker, as he is in so many other Republican primaries, in a race that could potentially pit the top members of his own administration against each other. And all of this is a reminder of how fluid things are in Trump’s orbit and how quickly the president’s thinking can shift.
“The President has assembled an all-star team that has achieved unprecedented success in just over one year,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “No amount of crazed media speculation about Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio will deter this Administration’s mission of fighting for the American people.”
For months, Vance has been seen as the front-runner to become the 2028 GOP nominee, a dynamic underscored by most public polling and Trump’s own comments.
An NBC News poll released last week found that 77% of Republican voters have a positive view of Vance, compared to 66% for Rubio.
In August, Trump told Fox News that Vance was “most likely“ the heir to the MAGA movement and “probably favored at this point.”
But mentioned in the same breath was Rubio.
“In all fairness, he’s the vice president, and I think Marco is also somebody that maybe would get together with JD in some form,” Trump said.
Trump also mentioned Rubio in a May interview with NBC News, when he named him as a “great” potential GOP leader.
“I would say one is slightly more diplomatic than the other,” Trump said, without naming them, though diplomacy is Rubio’s job. “I think they’re both of very high intelligence.”
In recent weeks Trump has increasingly praised Rubio, who because of his duties as secretary of state and national security adviser is more front and center as the administration increasingly focuses on foreign policy fights in Venezuela, Iran and potentially Cuba. At a White House ceremony Thursday for Major League Soccer champions Inter Miami CF, Trump twice called special attention to Rubio.
“I’m telling you, he’s going to go down as the best secretary of state in the country’s history, Marco Rubio,” Trump said.
He added: “I don’t want him to get too popular. You know, when they get too popular, all of a sudden you see, ‘Where’s Marco. He’s not around anymore.’”
And while Rubio’s profile has risen thanks to his foreign policy portfolio, Vance has, by contrast, faded more into the background.
Rubio was present at the makeshift Mar-a-Lago war room when the Iran strikes were launched, while Vance was in Washington, pictured at the head of the table, where the president would typically sit, drinking a Mountain Dew in the Situation Room. Vance, according to a spokesperson, was not at Mar-a-Lago because of administration security protocols “to maintain operational secrecy” and “to limit the president and vice president co-locating away from the White House.”
Vance was the first member of the administration to defend the war on national TV. And he and second lady Usha Vance joined Trump on Saturday as the remains of fallen U.S. service members arrived at Dover Air Force Base. But since his March 2 appearance on Fox News, Vance has not had much of a public-facing role in the war messaging, and his once-aggressive social media presence has been relatively quiet.
“The entire national security team, including the Vice President, have been constantly engaged in active deliberations surrounding the operations in Iran,” Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk said in a statement for this article.
The war has placed Vance — an Iraq War veteran who has long railed against the U.S. involving itself in messy foreign conflicts — in a position that doesn’t align neatly with his personal views. While Vance has been more hawkish on Iran and its nuclear capabilities, he expressed reservations about attacking the country, a person familiar with his thinking told NBC News.
But when it became clear Trump would go ahead with military action, Vance pushed for a quick strike that would limit casualties, fearing that the longer the U.S. waited, the more likely it would be that plans would leak to the media, raising the prospect of a pre-emptive attack on U.S. troops in the Middle East.
“I said this before the conflict started, I’ll repeat it again — there’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multiyear conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective,” Vance said during his appearance on Fox News.
Iran can also present a downside to Rubio’s moment in the sun.
The war is so far overwhelmingly unpopular with wide swaths of the electorate, although the Republican base is more divided. The NBC News poll released last week showed 54% of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, compared with 41% who approve and 5% who say they either don’t have an opinion or aren’t sure.
Foreign interventions have become less popular within a Republican Party that has embraced Trump’s “America First” stance, which is skeptical of U.S. entanglements abroad. But while there are pockets of MAGA resistance to the war with Iran, much of his loyal base is still with him.
Ninety percent of self-identified MAGA-aligned Republicans said the U.S. should have struck Iran, while only 5% said it should not have done so.
Among non-MAGA aligned Republicans, 54% supported strikes, while 36% did not.
Rubio’s messaging on the war has not been without hiccups. Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill this week, he suggested that the U.S. joined Israel in the attack on Iran because the U.S. knew Israel was going to proceed with strikes. The comments drew anger, including among MAGA influencers, from those who viewed it as an admission that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had forced Trump into action. Trump denied that was the case, and Rubio later clarified that it was Trump’s call to go to war.
“In many ways, this is the worst time for Marco to pop,” the former Trump administration official said. “If this is perceived as a very unpopular thing, getting credit for it and helping influence it is probably not great.”
“It’s so early,” a longtime Trump fundraiser added. “But it’s a one-man primary between these two.”
The fundraiser said that “Marco just has to do the job well” to position himself for running in 2028. They said that Trump regularly informally polls officials in his administration and those in the broader Republican orbit about the idea, and momentum has been shifting of late.
“It’s 80-20 Marco,” the person said, with the caveat that they weren’t sure if another presidential run was “in Marco’s heart.”
Of course he wants to be president, the person said, “but will he work for it?”
Trump, who has often promoted Vance and Rubio as a potential 2028 ticket, said he would “be inclined” to endorse a successor in the Republican presidential primaries. He praised both last month at a Board of Peace meeting, during which he called Vance “brilliant” and referred to Rubio as the vice president’s “best friend.”
Despite any potential future rivalry, Rubio and Vance are known to be friendly and have downplayed the idea that presidential politics are a wedge between them. They talk at least five times a day “on a light day,” Vance told NBC News last year.
The two were seen spending hours together at the recent Winter Olympics in Italy. When Vance was asked by reporters about foreign policy, he was quick to invoke Rubio, as he often does.
“Marco briefed me 15 minutes ago,” Vance said recently about an incident where a U.S.-registered boat clashed with Cuban border patrol leaving four dead, including one American.
Vance has said this year’s midterm elections will help clarify his political future, while Rubio, as a State Department spokesperson noted, has said he hopes Vance runs and believes he would be a “great nominee.”
“He’s a close friend, and I hope he intends to do it. I know it’s kind of early,” Rubio said in July of a potential Vance presidential run.
Longtime Trump advisers say that the president loves polling people around him on whatever policy or political issue is on his mind. He gathers key advisers and those he trusts to get feedback on how he should move forward and makes decisions based on that input.
While they acknowledge that has included the Vance-or-Rubio question of late, according to three people familiar with those conversations, they caution that no final answer is imminent.
“This is just what Trump does,” a longtime Trump world adviser said. “He does it all the time. And it often doesn’t mean anything.”
But increasingly in recent conversations about the two, Trump’s comments have turned to Rubio.
Trump “talks about Marco and not JD,” a Republican senator said of the dynamic.
“I think he likes him [Rubio],” the senator added. “He admires his competence when it’s not challenging him. And JD is wandering in the wilderness.”
