The odd couple: Vance and Rubio stick together through 2028 speculation

Try as some might to drive a wedge between them, Vance and Rubio are publicly sticking together. It makes sense, given their positions as senior members of this administration. They may both be stars, but it is still President Donald Trump’s show.

The problem, however, is that many are looking ahead to the sequel in 2028. 

“We’re not even at the midterms yet,” a Republican strategist who requested anonymity to discuss future campaigns told the Washington Examiner. “Their interests might diverge down the road, but right now they are on the same team and have a lot of common interests.”

Both men have told interviewers that the success of the Trump administration is more important to them than any future race.

NBC News recently quoted a “person close to the vice president” as saying anti-Vance positioning by Republicans with their eyes on 2028 is hurting the current administration, in addition to being “silly and early.” But the outlet reported that this person made clear that “their critique did not extend to Rubio or any other Cabinet member who might be entertaining thoughts of a presidential bid.”

There still isn’t much that can tamp down the speculation. “If JD Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him,” Rubio told Vanity Fair last year. 

That would seem to be as close to a Sherman statement as one can get years before the next presidential election. Yet many played up a joke Vance reportedly made to a photographer during a shoot for the magazine profile: “I’ll give you $100 for every person you make look really s****y compared to me. And $1,000 if it’s Marco.”

Even their teamwork is often carefully inspected for rifts. Much was made of Vance’s absence from Trump’s news conference announcing the Venezuela operation. He did stand with Trump, Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth when the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were made public. But his team has had to push back against reports of Iran policy disagreements as the Islamic Republic faces protests that the president has pledged to support.

“Faced with a barrage of American threats to grab Greenland, Denmark’s foreign minister and his Greenlandic counterpart flew to Washington for — they hoped — sympathetic talks with Marco Rubio, the secretary of state,” Politico reported. “But their plan for a soothing diplomatic chat escalated into a tense White House head-to-head with the [European Union’s] nemesis, JD Vance.”

“Vance hates us,” an unnamed European diplomat told the outlet. No disagreements between Vance and Rubio on Greenland were specified or are apparent.

Vance professes no hatred for Rubio. “I was very fond of him as a Senate colleague, but you learn a lot about somebody when you see them actually operate behind the scenes,” he said when the two spoke at last year’s American Compass gala. “And Marco is, if anything, more impressive privately than he is publicly, which is very hard to do, but he’s very thoughtful. He actually listens, which is a rare skill in politics.”

On Vance, Rubio said at the same gathering: “I admired him in the Senate. I admire him a lot more now as vice president because I think vice presidents are just more impressive than senators.”

Nevertheless, there are plenty of Republicans who would prefer to see them as competitors. Some merely wish to avoid the kind of coronation that plagued Democrats, first with former President Joe Biden and then with his replacement at the top of the 2024 ticket, former Vice President Kamala Harris. Others see ideological and policy reasons to back one over the other.

Although they both are converts on Trump, Vance and Rubio hail from different strains of conservatism. Rubio became more populist after his unsuccessful bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, adding “common good” conservatives to his senior Senate staff during Trump’s first term.

It is less clear that Rubio has shifted on foreign policy. Vance, a veteran of the Iraq War, has historically been less hawkish. He was pushed for the vice presidency over rivals such as Rubio by the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who shares this skepticism of “forever wars.” Vance has publicly defended Trump’s recent military interventions and now has taken a certain amount of ownership of Venezuela after the war powers debate, though no modern vice president would have broken with the president on a Senate vote.

Trump, perhaps mindful of his late split over the 2020 election with former Vice President Mike Pence in his first term or simply enamored of the man he has called “the greatest secretary of state in the history of the United States,” has encouraged Rubio vs. Vance talk himself, though he has also proposed an elegant solution. 

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“I think Marco is also somebody that maybe would get together with JD in some form,” he said last year.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin might call it a “team of rivals.” Stranger things have happened.