Iran war jolts J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio’s jockeying for 2028

The U.S. assault on Iran has shaken the 2028 Vance-Rubio slate, favored by President Trump’s MAGA and predicted by polls and political analysts.

Vice President JD Vance, who has maintained a wide and consistent lead in polls over other potential 2028 Republican presidential candidates, has remained largely on the sidelines since Operation Epic Fury began on February 28.

In a speech Friday in North Carolina, Mr. Vance avoided the subject, except for a line or two in which he called the war against Iran “a military operation designed to ensure, as the president has repeatedly said, that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”

Behind the scenes, Mr. Trump acknowledged that Mr. Vance was “maybe less enthusiastic” about launching a war that has now sparked fighting across the Middle East.

As buzz around the 2028 nominees grows, the president has lightheartedly contrasted Mr. Vance with Mr. Rubio, the administration’s vaunted multitasker who is now one of the war’s leading tacticians and public defenders.

“Marco is going to go down, I think, as the best secretary of state in history. That’s my opinion,” Mr. Trump said this month at a summit of Latin American leaders.

Mr. Trump’s praise and Mr. Rubio’s elevated position raise new questions about the 2028 ticket and who will lead it.

Mr. Vance, Mr. Trump’s heir apparent, called Mr. Rubio his closest friend in the administration. Mr. Rubio said he would support Mr. Vance if the vice president ran for the Republican Party nomination.

Mr. Rubio is suddenly thrust into a much larger role in the administration that has eclipsed Mr. Vance, who campaigned against “stupid wars” and sent American troops to fight overseas.

Mr. Vance is not critical of the war in Iran, but his lukewarm public support is at odds with some in the MAGA world. At the same time, his lack of vocal opposition has raised fears that he will be seen as making an about-face from his previously unequivocal opposition to foreign wars and particularly the war with Iran.

Trump administration officials disclosed to the media last week that the vice president was “skeptical” about launching the war, which has now lasted a third week, resulting in the deaths of 13 U.S. troops and wreaking havoc on oil prices and the U.S. stock market.

The leak contradicts earlier reports that Mr. Vance advised Mr. Trump to attack Iran after the Islamic Republic violated the president’s red line on its weapons program.

This was consistent with Mr. Vance’s statements ahead of the 2024 election campaign.

“A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran, but not this weak bombing. If you want to hit the Iranians, you hit them hard,” Mr. Vance said in an interview with Fox News at the Republican National Convention in July 2024.

Mr. Vance appeared on prime-time Fox News three days after the U.S. strikes against Iran were launched, becoming one of the first senior administration officials to make the talk show rounds to defend the bombings.

“The main goal,” Mr. Vance said, “is to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.”

Mr. Vance has refused to speak publicly about how he advised the president before the strikes. When a reporter asked him about it Friday in North Carolina, Mr. Vance said he could not release the information because it was given in confidence.

A spokesman for Mr. Vance said the reports were incorrect about the vice president’s position on the strikes against Iran.

“The Vice President has been the subject of constant leaks left and right from people trying to project their opinions onto him. And, as a result, countless inconsistent accounts of the Vice President’s views have been published, showing that the mainstream media has no idea what they are talking about. The Vice President, a proud member of the President’s national security team, keeps his advice to the President confidential,” Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk said.

Mr. Rubio, meanwhile, has elevated his position as a key diplomat who also has Mr. Trump’s ear in his dual role as national security adviser.

“Marco has done an incredible job as secretary of state and national security adviser, among other things, and, as a result, he has earned a lot of respect within the party, across the board, from the MAGA base to the neoconservative establishment,” said Buzz Jacobs, a Republican Party strategist and former Rubio campaign adviser. “He’s proven himself. And, as a result, a lot of people are talking about him as the party’s presidential nominee instead of vice president.”

Mr. Rubio has strongly defended the US strikes against Iran, carried out jointly with Israel, as a measure aimed at preventing Iran from increasing its production of missiles that would enable it to acquire nuclear weapons.

“The goal is to destroy that missile capability. What they’ve been trying to do for a very long time is build a conventional weapons capability as a shield that they can hide behind, which means there will come a time when they will have so many conventional missiles, so many drones, and be able to inflict so much damage, that no one will be able to do anything about their nuclear program,” Mr. Rubio said. “That’s what they were trying to do: put themselves in a position of immunity where the damage they could inflict on the region would be so great that no one could do anything about their nuclear program or their nuclear ambitions. »

Mr. Trump has frequently complimented Mr. Rubio in public. Earlier this month, he asked Republican donors at a private reception at his Mar-a-Lago club which of the two men he should support in 2028. Donors cheered louder for Mr. Rubio than for Mr. Vance.

Mr. Rubio’s outlook for 2028 is soaring in prediction markets.

Mr. Rubio’s chances of winning the presidency in 2028 stood at just 6% in December. On March 12, the federally regulated prediction platform Kalshi put Mr. Rubio’s chances of winning the presidency at 18 percent, just one point below Mr. Vance’s 19 percent.

Prediction markets differ significantly from voter opinion polls, and Mr. Vance remains the clear leader in 2028 public polls.

The war has done little to narrow Mr. Vance’s double-digit lead over all his hypothetical competitors in the 2028 Republican primaries. He also won the support of Turning Point USA, a political action committee that played a key role in the youth vote for the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024.

A McLaughlin & Associates poll conducted March 4-9, during the second full week of the Iran war, shows Mr. Vance leading the Republican field with 36 percent, followed by Donald Trump Jr. with 16 percent.

Mr. Rubio’s support jumped to 10% from 4% in January.

Mr. Vance remains far, far ahead of any other potential Republican candidate in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Matthew Bartlett, a Republican Party strategist and former Trump appointee at the State Department, said the Republican voting base was comfortable and excited about Mr. Vance being at the top of the ticket in 2028.

The war in Iran will not dampen that enthusiasm, he said.

“The only way I see this dynamic changing is if the president himself changes it. »

Mr. Trump congratulated the two men a week before the war began at a meeting of his nearly formed Peace Council.

Mr. Trump called Mr. Vance a “bright, great guy” who is “a little tough on occasion.”

Mr. Rubio, he says, is the opposite of Mr. Vance.

“Marco does it with a velvet glove, but it’s killer, isn’t it? The result is the same. They do it very differently,” he said.

Asked in October about possible friction between the two during a podcast with Miranda Devine of the New York Post, Mr. Vance brushed it off.

“There won’t be any tension. Marco is my best friend in the administration. He and I work together a lot, and we really do, I think, a lot of the good work we do as an administration is because we’re all able to work together,” Mr. Vance said.