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- President Donald Trump has not yet endorsed Vice President JD Vance as his successor for 2028.
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio has emerged as a potential rival, with some Republicans supporting him.
- Trump’s reluctance to anoint an heir keeps potential candidates waiting and the Republican primary timeline uncertain.
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
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We recently assessed the large field of Democrats who could run for president in 2028 and are already making moves in that direction.
So it’s a good time to see what’s happening on the Republican side of things. What we know is that the next president won’t be Donald Trump.
The president, not yet to the halfway mark of his second term, has said he won’t try to test the Constitution’s ban on his running for a third term. But he also won’t want to pass the torch any time soon. While the conventional wisdom is that Vice President JD Vance will step in to be Trump’s heir, Trump has made his career by shattering conventional wisdom. There are plenty of other Republicans out there who would like to be president, including Trump’s ambitious Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
I spoke with Steve Contorno, a CNN senior reporter who covers Republicans, to get his sense for when and how a Republican race could get underway.
Our conversation, edited for length, is below.
What comes after Trump?
WOLF: Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image. He says that he will abide by the Constitution and not try to run or keep power for a third term. What is the current thinking about how Republicans might replace him?
CONTORNO: That conversation has to begin with the vice president. When you go to conservative events — Turning Point USA events, Trump rallies, CPAC — and talk to the grassroots, there’s a deference to him. You see that in the polling and the CPAC straw poll, and other sort of indicators.
When Trump was picking his running mate, his team was saying that he was doing so looking for someone who could carry the torch from him.
Trump, though, never really said that overtly, and he’s been very coy about who he wants to succeed him, both publicly and privately. That has led people to wonder whether Trump wants to consider Vance his heir. That has left the door open for people who remain firmly fans of Marco Rubio to fantasize about him.
Is there any sign of a Vance/Rubio rivalry?
WOLF: Trump talks about these two and he likes to frame it as an either-or or suggest they could be a team. Is there a rivalry building?
CONTORNO: Everything we’ve heard is that they get along great, and Rubio in public has been very deferential to the vice president. But there are certainly a lot of people in Trump’s orbit and in the Republican Party who remain fans of Rubio. There are people who wanted to see him be the vice president over Vance, who are giddy at the thought that he could ultimately be the person who steps in here.
It’s hard to know how much the hemming and hawing from Trump is authentic, how much of it is his tendency to play his own people off each other, and how much of it is his hesitance to anoint his successor, knowing that it will start the conversations about the post Trump presidency.
He’s very much in his presidency, and he doesn’t want to be considered a lame duck, and one of the ways to protect that is to keep the future and the future Republican Party as cloudy as possible.
Will Rubio leave the administration?
WOLF: Vance would have to run from within the Trump administration. Rubio couldn’t be a political candidate as secretary of state. So is the thinking that Rubio will leave the administration at some point?
CONTORNO: I don’t think we’ve seen any indication that he would leave, and given his statements about supporting Vance if he chooses to run, I would not expect Rubio to step down to challenge Vance now. If Vance decides not to run for whatever reason — because he doesn’t feel like he has Trump’s support, because he has a very young family that is going to be growing in the next year, because he doesn’t want to do the job — then perhaps you would see Rubio make some movements. But there would have to be an extraordinary change of circumstances in the relationship between the vice president and the secretary of state, or a significant change in Trump’s posture toward those two men, for Rubio to take such a significant step.
The other thing about Rubio is he’s been in public office for most of his adult life. It has long been known in some circles that he would like to work in the private sector at some point to build some wealth for his family. If the presidency is on the table, perhaps the calculus changes.
Why the shine on Rubio?
WOLF: Rubio is interesting. You said there are people that are kind of giddy for the focus to shift to him. He’s arguably done more with his job inside the Trump administration than anyone else in the cabinet. Is that why people are interested in him?
CONTORNO: There’s this perception that he has handled everything Trump has thrown at him with both professionalism and grace, without angering or embarrassing Trump.
There are a lot of people who were in Trump’s orbit who are from Florida, and a lot of those people were fans of Rubio’s. The donor base likes Rubio a lot. When Trump was trying to choose a running mate, they were among the most vocal in pushing for Rubio, so there’s always been that contingency of Rubio backers.
People who are really plugged in and watching the Trump administration every single day on Fox News like it’s a reality TV show, and are on social media or whatever — they love Rubio, they see him as hyper-competent. Even young people, who are among the people who are most dissatisfied with Trump because of his foreign policy moves, are among the people who I find most enthusiastic about Rubio, which is somewhat counterintuitive.
WOLF: Totally ironic.
CONTORNO: Yeah, because he is in many ways the architect, or at least the enforcer, of this foreign policy. And they’re somewhat skeptical of Vance, because of his past statements about Trump, because of his ties to big tech. Even though Vance is supposedly the isolationist in Trump’s circle, it doesn’t mean he’s won over the people who are most interested in avoiding foreign conflicts.
How is Vance navigating recent developments?
WOLF: Vance has a new book out about his conversion to Catholicism, and the White House has inserted him into the end-of-war negotiations. What have we learned about him over the past week?
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CONTORNO: The timing of the book launch is pretty remarkable, and in some ways this week marked the unofficial kickoff of the 2028 GOP presidential primary. Vance not only launched a promotional tour for his book that landed him on “The View” — hostile territory for most Republicans, but also a familiar stop for ambitious politicians — and forced him to navigate questions about his political future, but he also stepped out as the face of the administration’s deal with Iran. That agreement has sharply divided Republicans and it seems it has the potential to become a significant fault line in a GOP primary. Already we’ve seen Texas Sen. Ted Cruz step out to criticize the pact in deeply unflattering terms — with Vance allies in Trump world responding quickly to clap back at Cruz and his well-known presidential ambitions.
Could Trump force the party to back Vance?
WOLF: It’s only four sitting vice presidents in history who have become president. It would be kind of an anomaly for Vance to succeed Trump. Are they cognizant of that in the administration? Or would the party coalesce around him if Trump endorsed him?
CONTORNO: I think you would certainly see the party coalesce around him. There are so many people who take Trump’s word above all else, and you’re already starting to see some organizations start maneuvering for Vance. Turning Point USA, for example, has already endorsed him. They have not only the platform that was created by Charlie Kirk, but also infrastructure, an organization that has been on the ground in a lot of swing states.
There are others who are eager to jump in on those efforts, but no one wants to step too much out in front of Trump. I think that’s why you’re not seeing other candidates play footsie with the idea of running in 2028 even though we know there are folks who still harbor presidential ambitions in the party — Cruz and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, among others.
There’s not been a ton of activity in Iowa and New Hampshire on the Republican side because of the fear of crossing Trump. But that has also been a challenge for Vance as well, because as much as there are people who assume he would be the heir, he can’t be seen as positioning himself for succeeding Trump before Trump is ready.
Would Trump want to make this simple?
WOLF: And from Trump’s perspective, if you’re going to style your presidencies as a reality TV show, picking an heir and simply getting behind that person wouldn’t make for very good ratings.
CONTORNO: Vance has joked about this as well. He had a comment where he quipped that he and Marco are playing in the latest iteration of “The Apprentice.” That’s a joke, but there’s a lot of truth in it. The fact that Vance said it means that they’re all sort of cognizant of Trump’s preference for drama and to keep people in suspense.
What is the timeline for Republicans?
WOLF: There’s the 2026 election coming up, and that will reframe a lot of the political conversation, depending on whether Republicans lose the House or the Senate and how that affects Trump’s final two years in office. What is the conventional wisdom about when we could see people start to announce campaigns?
CONTORNO: If you look back in previous cycles, that winter right after the midterms, you start seeing people jump in. It remains to be seen whether anyone dares to launch a campaign, whether formally or informally, that soon. Running for president takes so much time, and if anyone does think they have a legitimate chance of challenging Vance, they’re going to have to start building a following in either Iowa or New Hampshire very quickly after November. So if Trump holds out from endorsing Vance, which is a real possibility, you might start seeing some of these candidates test the waters, knowing that, hey, if there’s an opening because the president isn’t sold on Vance, then we need to start building up that base of support and our financial coffers sooner than later.
For Vance, how long can you wait? How long are you going to sit around and hope that the president gives you the endorsement that was all but promised when you took this job — before you have to just say, “I’m running, whether the president is ready to back me or not”?
It is such a conundrum for these hopefuls and for Vance, because so much of it does rest on Trump’s timing, which I think is why you can kind of throw out the conventional wisdom playbook. They’re all going to be waiting and watching what the president does.
Is there still a viable anti-Trump wing of the GOP?
WOLF: Is there space for an anti-Trump or a Trump-fatigue Republican who wants to capitalize on the idea that he is not a popular president and moving Republicans beyond him?
CONTORNO: You’ve seen Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul already suggest he’s considering it, and he would certainly claim that Trump has not governed as a Republican or a conservative, and therefore there needs to be someone in the party who is going to speak to that.
I think you’re going to see people try to make the case that they could be a more effective version of Trump. You saw DeSantis try to do that in 2024, and he’s down in Florida building up his resume, just in case there’s an opening in that lane. Whether there’s a Nikki Haley (former US ambassador to the UN and governor of South Carolina) who wants to try once again to run from the establishment wing, or a fresh voice like Gov. Spencer Cox in Utah, who is trying to bring back a more — I don’t say moderate, but collegial — approach to governing on the right.
In recent primaries, Trump-backed candidates have been so successful that it is going to give any of those people pause in believing they can convince caucusgoers in a deeply conservative pro-Trump state like Iowa — or in New Hampshire, which he has won repeatedly, even when the rest of the party wasn’t ready to embrace him. That’s going to be a real challenge.
What should we be watching for?
WOLF: What are the 2028 markers you’re looking for? What would signal that Vance is either in or out, or Rubio is in or out, or DeSantis is making moves?
CONTORNO: Vance has a book out (it was released on Tuesday), and typically a book is a pretty clear signal that you have some presidential ambitions. That will be closely watched for what’s in that book, and how it’s received, and how he promotes it. It’ll be a little mini test drive for him to get a sense of how the country is feeling about him separate from the president.
Otherwise I’ve talked to people in New Hampshire who have said the unspoken rule right now is don’t come here because you’re going to anger Trump. The Iowa State Fair that’s coming up should traditionally draw a lot of people who are interested in running, and I don’t know if you’re going to see that kind of turnout. Or maybe you get a bunch of people coming to campaign in some of these congressional seats in Iowa that are going to be real battlegrounds. Maybe that’ll be an excuse for Cruz to get back to Iowa and try to put the band back together there.
The midterms are going to be a real indicator of whether you’re going to get a traditional starting line. If the Republicans under Trump pull it off and hold on to the House, then all bets are off, because it’ll be very clear that Trump will remain fully in command of the timeline and the party going forward.
Is there a money race?
WOLF: Campaigns are very much about money. Are there any indications in the money race?
CONTORNO: There’ll be a lot of hesitance to donate against JD Vance. Even the people in the party who don’t necessarily like Trump and were looking for an alternative in 2024, either in DeSantis or Haley, a lot of those people do like Vance. He has a lot of connections to the fundraising center of the party, and so you’re not going to want to anger both the sitting president and the potential future president by throwing $20 million at Ted Cruz or whoever. Unless you were really, really sure that Vance wasn’t going to get Trump’s support and wasn’t going to be the guy. Any Republican going out there right now trying to fundraise as the JD Vance alternative is going to get crickets in their inbox from the big donor structure.
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