The early Republican scramble to succeed President Donald Trump has played out, in part, in the White House press briefing room rather than in a strictly private “shadow primary” phase, according to the reporting. On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance took the lectern to field questions from reporters for 54 minutes, stepping in temporarily for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was on maternity leave.
Two weeks earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had also filled in as a temporary replacement, taking questions for about five minutes fewer than Vance. The arrangement gave both men what the reporting described as a rare high-profile chance to reintroduce themselves to cameras on topics that range beyond the party nomination question, even as the 2028 race has begun to form around the idea of who could be Trump’s successor.
Vance used the briefing to push back on how a reporter characterized his future. In the session, Vance said, “I’m not a potential future candidate. I’m a vice president,” after a reporter referred to him as a potential future candidate.
For Trump, the reporting said, the 2028 question has remained open—and he has repeatedly brought up both men’s names when asked about a potential successor to his Make America Great Again political movement. At a White House event last week with visiting law enforcement officials, Trump polled the audience on whether they would prefer Rubio or Vance as the party’s next presidential nominee, asking, “Who’s it gonna be? Is it gonna be JD? Is it gonna be somebody else? I don’t know,” and then asking, “Who likes JD Vance?” and “Who likes Marco Rubio?”
The audience response was split into applause for both, with the reporting noting that Vance appeared to receive a louder reaction. Trump later said, “Sounds like a good ticket,” and called them “a dream team.”
The reporting also linked Trump’s willingness to publicly test contenders with his long-running focus on television performance, describing him as a prolific TV watcher who prizes how politicians come across on cable news. It cited that as Trump weighed possible running mates in earlier campaigns, he evaluated contenders in part by their debating skills and television readiness.
In the briefing-room style comparisons, the reporting said Vance has often seemed more confrontational than Rubio in past appearances in the same venue. It pointed to a January moment when Vance blamed a federal immigration officer’s fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis on Democrats and the protester who was killed, and said journalists should be ashamed of their coverage of protests over immigration enforcement.
On Tuesday, however, Vance kept the tone more jocular, the reporting said, seeming to mirror Rubio’s lighter, playful approach from the prior briefing. Both men used similar joking lines about the format of questions. Rubio told a reporter: “You can ask me two questions. I’ll give you one answer.” Vance responded with a version of his own: “If you ask two questions, I can only guarantee that I’ll answer one. In fact, I’m a politician. Maybe I won’t even answer the one that you asked, but I will try at least to answer one question.”
The reporting said both men also joked about receiving a seating chart from the White House and about being told which reporters to call on and not call on. It described Rubio as sometimes interjecting more freely during shouted questions, while Vance appeared to seek more order, including instructing reporters not to shout over one another.
In one of Vance’s final answers, the reporting said he took issue with the length of a question’s preamble. Vance chided the reporter, saying: “C’mon, man. Have a little bit of objectivity in the way that you ask these questions.”
Rubio, who had sought the presidency in 2016 unsuccessfully, later shared the briefing-room moment from his own session on social media, the reporting said. When asked about his hope for America, Rubio said the United States “continues ‘to be the place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything, where you’re not limited by the circumstances of your birth, by the color of your skin, by your ethnicity, but frankly, it’s a place where you are able to overcome challenges and achieve your full potential.’”
The next day, the reporting said, Rubio posted a video clip of his answer that included footage of Trump, Rubio, and former President Ronald Reagan, alongside music described as reminiscent of campaign style. It said the clip received more than 4 million views, and that Trump weighed in with praise on Air Force One while returning from a trip to China. The reporting said Trump told reporters, “I think he’s outstanding,” and added, “I thought he was great. I mean, I saw every word of it.”
As for how Trump viewed Vance’s Tuesday performance, the reporting said the president had not yet publicly weighed in.