President Donald Trump is reportedly giving increasingly high marks to Vice President JD Vance, strengthening Vance’s chances of securing the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2028.
Vance has been in the spotlight throughout the year, promoting a new memoir about his faith, appearing frequently on TV and negotiating an end to the Iran war — all of which has reportedly caught Trump’s eye.
The president, who is said to have openly quizzed friends and associates about whether Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio should succeed him in office, has shifted his tone, insiders told Axios.
“POTUS isn’t asking, ‘JD or Marco?’’ anymore,” one source familiar with the president’s thinking told the outlet. “He’s no longer asking, ‘How’s JD doing?’ He’s now saying, ‘JD looks great, right?”
“JD is earning it, and Trump sees it,” a senior Trump adviser told Axios, continuing that Rubio “wasn’t planning to run anyway, and he’d be even less likely to do so now.”
The Independent has contacted the White House and State Department for comment.
Recent polls show Vance as the hypothetical GOP frontrunner by a wide margin, with Rubio trailing in second.
For his part, the Ohioan said he’s not thinking that far ahead just yet. Vance has said his first priority is helping Republicans defend their imperiled congressional majority in the November midterms.
“Usha and I will absolutely sit down and talk about what comes next for our family,” Vance said in June of his discussions about his future with the first lady. “The way I make decisions is, I try not to make them until I absolutely must.”
He took a similar tack last year when asked about 2028 plans.
“If we do a good job in 2025 and 2026, then we can talk about the politics in 2027,” Vance said. “I really think the American people are so fed up with folks who are already running for the next job, seven months into the current one.”
Vance may be getting some extra love from the Oval Office these days, but he still carries some political liabilities that complicate any potential 2028 run.
He has been one of the key faces in the administration working to end the Iran war, which is highly unpopular and linked in many voters’ minds to high gas prices.
“If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” Trump joked last month when asked about a tentative peace deal.
Trump has a habit of cycling through friends and allies quickly, and Vance could find himself on the outs for any number of reasons in the next two years.
Vance, for better or worse, is politically tied to Silicon Valley and his mentor, the right-wing investor Peter Thiel, who reportedly helped get Vance onto the Trump 2024 ticket.
As voters in California mull a billionaire tax, and as AI drives both layoffs and sky high housing prices in certain cities, a former venture capitalist like Vance may not be the man voters want by 2028.
In addition to these economic factors, Vance, a Catholic convert, has recently been feuding in recent months with the Pope, a stance that could alienate the president’s Christian base.
The vice president is also often the subject of mockery online, where critics use a bizarre, baby-like, bald-headed version of his face to roast him.
Still, Vance has other factors going for him.
He won an early and influential 2028 endorsement from Erika Kirk, the widow of the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA organization commands major influence among young GOP voters.
Vance’s tech ties have also made him a highly effective and well-connected fundraiser, a must in modern presidential politics.
Rubio has his own advantages.
In his role as Secretary of State, Rubio has managed to stay slightly outside some of the administration’s more contentious domestic policy battles, and his involvement in negotiations to topple the regime in Cuba could yield a major foreign policy goal long sought by both parties.
A shift in Cuba would play especially well in the large, often Republican expat community in Florida, Rubio’s home state.
Rubio, a Spanish-speaking Latino and son of Cuban immigrants, could also potentially win back some Latino voters alienated by the Trump administration’s harsh deportation crackdown.
