During an October dinner, President Donald Trump reportedly polled media mogul Rupert Murdoch to get his thoughts on the question flying through Washington ahead of the 2028 presidential election: Who do you like more, Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio?
The two men sat awkwardly nearby as Murdoch responded, according to an excerpt obtained by Axios from the forthcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
Murdoch, who reportedly tried to talk Trump out of choosing Vance in 2024, allegedly responded that Vance “has the potential to be great,” while Rubio “is brilliant.”
“With Vance and Rubio sitting awkwardly at the table, Murdoch was notably more effusive about Rubio,” according to the excerpt.
“President Trump has assembled an all-star team that has achieved unprecedented success,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in a statement to The Independent. “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.”
The Independent has contacted the State Department for comment.
The dinner marked something of a turnaround in the Trump-Murdoch relationship. Murdoch’s media empire, including Fox News, helped boost Trump’s political rise, though the relationship soured by the Republican’s second term. Trump eventually sued the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, unsuccessfully, for reporting on an alleged lewd birthday letter he sent to convicted sex traffickerJeffrey Epstein.
Around the time of the dinner, executives at News Corp, one of Murdoch’s media companies, were reportedly discussing a book framing Trump as the “President of Peace,” according to the excerpt.
The Independent has contacted News Corp for comment.
President Trump has a habit of openly comparing the political prospects of two of his potential successors, chatting about 2028 at Mar-a-Lago, on phone calls and during White House events.
Vance has jokingly compared the habit to Trump’s prior career as the star of the reality competition show The Apprentice.
“Well, I just don’t think it sounds like the President of the United States to have a televised competition for who would succeed him as his apprentice. I just think that’s not at all what you would expect the President to do,” Vance said in May.
Vance added at the time that Trump has “always been fascinated by politics” and said it was “natural for him to, you know, joke around with us a little bit, to play around with the idea.”
The party is reportedly split over whom to back in 2028, with polling showing Vance as the favorite, while a “draft Rubio” movement reportedly works behind the scenes to boost the secretary of state.
Regime Change, which releases on Tuesday, has been sending shockwaves through the administration.
Trump officials believe sourcing for the book includes leaked secret recordings from inside the Situation Room, the strictly guarded area where the president makes and monitors critical national security decisions, and one of the most high-security areas on Earth.
“We’re afraid some of our most sensitive conversations were being recorded,” an administration source said of the potential leak in a previous interview with Axios. “And we have no idea which ones.”
The records could have captured Trump officials as they discussed a range of sensitive topics, including the war in Iran and the campaign against Venezuela and drug traffickers in Latin America.
The book also reportedly captures the tension inside the administration over the Epstein files.
Regime Change reportedly describes a Situation Room meeting about how to handle the fallout from the administration’s slow-walking the release of the files and a reported incident where then-FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino allegedly blew up at then-Attorney General Pam Bondi for what he called the “dumb f***ing charade” of giving an early batch of files to right-wing influencers, then declining to release much more for months.
