President Donald Trump has long played coy about which Republican should succeed him in 2028, declining to pick between presumed contenders Marco Rubio and JD Vance.
But on Thursday, he appeared to warm to a different Republican altogether: GOP Senator Ted Cruz.
During his Oval Office announcement about renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” a reporter asked Trump about his thoughts on the Texas senator’s ambitions to become the Republican nominee.
“Uhh, you say he’s going to run?” said the 80-year-old president, who reportedly has difficulty hearing, before the reporter clarified that Cruz was “teasing a run.”
“Uhh, I would say that, uhh, he’s very talented. He’s a very good friend of mine,” Trump replied.
He paused, briefly looking down as if mulling it over, before giving Cruz a tepid nod: “I think he might do good, yeah. He’s a talented guy.”
The boost from Trump comes at a convenient time for Cruz, who said on Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s podcast Wednesday, “It’s no secret that I want to be president.”
The day before, the 55-year-old senator—who was Trump’s last remaining challenger in the 2016 GOP primary—had exclaimed, “Oh, no!” after being asked if Vance, 42, is the inevitable 2028 Republican nominee.
“There’s going to be a full discussion about who we are and what we believe,” Cruz told MS Now’s Way Too Early.
The remark appears to merely be the tip of the iceberg of a growing tension brewing between the senator and the vice president. The Washington Post reported last December that Cruz was privately bad-mouthing Vance to donors, particularly his isolationist foreign policy views.
Cruz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While it had long been assumed that Vance would be the MAGA heir apparent and would eventually receive Trump’s endorsement to launch his own presidential bid, Trump has repeatedly refused to say whether the vice president would make a good successor, even when he was in the same room.
Instead, the president has pitted Vance and Rubio against each other, often asking Republican donors, advisers, and dinner guests which of the two men should run for president in 2028.
Trump privately indicated that he does see Vance as his successor in a private Oval Office meeting with donors last month, saying, “At the end of the day, we need to elect JD,” two sources told The Washington Post.
But six other people close to Trump warned that the erratic president, who tends to change his mind at a moment’s notice, may not have settled on Vance and noted that Trump tells different things to different people.
Although Vance has repeatedly said that he is focused on his job as vice president, his wife, Usha Vance, said Wednesday that she is keeping “an open mind, an open heart” about their political future in an interview with Fox News’ Fox & Friends.
