President Trump has reportedly been pitting two of his top officials against each other in a bizarre succession game.
Within hours of the first strikes on Iran last month, he hosted an event at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, where he asked guests whether he should endorse Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Vice President JD Vance to succeed him.
Conversations about the two men have been heating up for months, as MAGA starts to muse about life after Trump, and more and more chatter suggests that, in Trump’s head, Rubio is starting to win out.
That was the case on Feb. 28, as Trump asked a room of Republican donors to cheer for which of the two men they would rather see run in 2028, NBC News reports.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump asked the two dozen or so supporters which of the two they’d prefer, and it was Rubio who got the louder cheer.
Speaking to NBC on the condition of anonymity, one attendee said, “It was almost unanimous for Marco.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” a second said. “It was clear, at least that night.”
A third, however, said it was more “evenly split,” which may come as a surprise given Florida is Rubio country. He’s Miami-born and raised, attended Miami University, and served as the state’s senator for 14 years before being tapped to join Trump’s cabinet.
The Journal reports that sources who have spoken to the president have echoed that he has lately favored Rubio, 54. The president is said to seek his counsel regularly, and as State Department boss he has been front and center in Trump’s foreign policy-heavy approach to governance.
Speaking to the same outlet, a former administration official said, “The Mar-a-Lago donor crew are not JD people… 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… If there were a poll taken tomorrow, I’d bet JD is still up by 40 [points], or whatever it is.”
The Journal cites Vance, 41, as the frontrunner, and reports that Rubio has said he would not go against him were he to run.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House communication director Steven Cheung said, “The President has assembled an all-star team that has achieved unprecedented success in just over one year. 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.”
Rubio, once derided as “Little Marco” by Trump when he ran against him in the 2016 Republican primary, has more recently won public praise from the president.
Amid the war in Iran, Trump said, “Marco is going to go down, I think, as the best secretary of state in history. That’s my opinion. Now, I’m a little prejudiced because I like him.”
Vance, meanwhile, has been noticeably quiet since the fighting started in the Middle East, having repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he was opposed to foreign wars.
An NBC News poll from last week found that among conservatives, 77 percent liked Vance and 66 percent liked Rubio.
In an interview with the same outlet in February, Trump said without naming names, “I would say one is slightly more diplomatic than the other… I think they’re both of very high intelligence.”
