GOP megadonor Ken Griffin said he would rather Marco Rubio lead the 2028 Republican presidential ticket than JD Vance, according to a report.
Griffin, the billionaire founder and CEO of hedge fund Citadel, was asked directly who he would rather succeed President Donald Trump during a Q&A session at the exclusive Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Wednesday, Axios reported.
In response, Griffin, who is estimated to be worth $51.6 billion, noted that he backed Rubio’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign and would naturally want to support the secretary of state again over the vice president.
Griffin, who was the fifth-largest GOP donor in the 2024 election cycle, giving more than $100 million to Republican candidates, did not specify how he would support Rubio if he ran for president in 2028.
Griffin’s intervention is another twist in the battle over who will become the first Republican presidential nominee since 2012 to be someone other than Trump.
It is widely expected that either Vance, 40, or Rubio, 55, will be the frontrunner for the 2028 Republican nomination, with the vice president long considered the MAGA heir apparent. Rubio claims he will back Vance, should he run.
However, Trump has never offered anything more than a lukewarm endorsement of Vance as a future presidential candidate, while lately appearing to take a bigger shine to Rubio.
Trump has frequently asked people whether Rubio or Vance would make a better candidate in 2028.
According to Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a book by The New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump even sought advice from influential conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
During an October 2025 dinner, Trump asked Murdoch what he thought of Vance, to which Murdoch replied that the vice president “has the potential to be great.” Murdoch also said he believes Rubio is “brilliant.”
Trump himself has also dropped hints about who he sees as his successor. In another section of Regime Change, the authors recount that someone asked the president whether he was concerned that whoever next entered the White House would strip away all the tacky gold trinkets he had installed around the building.
Trump replied, “Cubans love gold,” in an apparent reference to Rubio and his heritage.
However, White House sources also claim Vance remains Trump’s preferred choice.
“JD is earning it, and Trump sees it,” one unnamed source told Axios, while insisting that Rubio “wasn’t planning to run anyway, and he’d be even less likely to do so now.”
Griffin has been a frequent critic of Trump and did not support him in the 2024 election. Instead, he backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the GOP primary.
The billionaire donor is also unconvinced by Vance and urged Trump not to select him as his 2024 running mate, Axios reporter Alex Isenstadt revealed in his book Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power.
The Daily Beast has contacted Vance’s and Rubio’s offices for comment.
