President Donald Trump is pitting two of his closest confidants to succeed him in office.
“Which one of you is going to be at the top of the ticket?” the president told Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to White House insiders quoted by the Wall Street Journal. “I used to think it would be Vance-Rubio, but maybe it will be Rubio-Vance.”
While Trump is reluctant to discuss an end to his political career, inside sources told the Journal that Trump has said any successor would have to earn his backing for a shot at the top job.
Polls have consistently shown Vance as the favorite to replace Trump, and Trump told reporters on Tuesday he views his vice president as his most likely successor.
But he has increasingly talked up Rubio following his striking journey from “Little Marco,” as Trump disparagingly called him during the 2016 campaign, to presidential problem-solver on a wide range of foreign policy crises, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Rubio has solidified his MAGA bona fides by striking deportation deals with other countries and revoking student visas, the Journal reported.
When NBC asked Trump about Vance succeeding him as president in May, Trump called him a “fantastic, brilliant guy,” then name-dropped Rubio: “Marco is great. There’s a lot of them that are great.”
“I cannot lose you,” Trump also told Rubio after hearing this summer that the secretary, who was then helping the president juggle both the crisis in the Middle East and preparations for a security summit in Europe, had not yet received a second dose of the shingles vaccine.
Rubio, meanwhile, told Fox News that Vance would be a “great nominee” but is open to running himself. “You never rule things out,” he said.
Other names that have been floated as contenders for the Oval Office include Govs. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas and Ron DeSantis of Florida as well as Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Should Trump’s controversial aspirations for a third term come to nothing, MAGAworld operatives who spoke with Axios say Trump will be hard to replace.
“What will be hard to capture is Trump’s authenticity. That’s what makes him so beloved,” one prominent GOP figure told the outlet. “The smartest candidate will understand that everything is in deference to the base, and present it that way.”
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