A group of Republican donors have been secretly plotting to boost Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s prospects of challenging Vice President JD Vance for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.
Vance remains widely seen as Donald Trump’s most likely successor heading into the next election in 2028—assuming the president does not himself decide to buck almost a century of constitutional history by running for a third term.
But behind closed doors, the president has lately admired how “popular” and “loved” he thinks Rubio has become as “the greatest secretary of state in history,” ABC News reports, citing multiple sources familiar with Trump’s thinking.
Trump has not formally endorsed any prospective heir to the MAGA throne, saying only that he would like to see Vance and Rubio run a joint campaign, without clarifying who he envisages at the top of the ticket.
ABC News suggests that as Trump has shown an ever warmer view of his former adversary in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, who he then witheringly nicknamed “Little Marco,” a group of influential Republican backers have now “quietly begun discussing ways to further boost Rubio’s political future.”
What’s more, those efforts are apparently unfolding without any involvement from Rubio himself, “reflecting what some in Trump-aligned circles see as a growing enthusiasm for Rubio’s rising profile inside the administration.”
The Secretary of State has assumed an increasingly central role during Trump’s second stint at the White House, backing military operations against Iran and Venezuela while implementing international sanctions in line with the president’s “America First” foreign policy agenda.
All the same, those functions have also arguably left Rubio increasingly exposed to the fallout of Trump’s highly turbulent second presidency, most notably with respect to Trump’s deeply unpopular new war in the Middle East.
ABC has not identified the Republican donors thought to be quietly pushing Rubio as a prospective presidential candidate.
It is unclear at this stage whether their influence is likely to rival those who have otherwise thrown their support behind Vance, who enjoys backing from Trump’s sons, influential conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, major tech donors like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and late MAGA activist Charlie Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA.
The Daily Beast contacted the White House, Rubio and Vance’s representatives for comment on this story.
“The President has assembled an all-star team that has achieved unprecedented success in just over one year,” White House Director of Communication Steven Cheung said. “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.”
