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

The U.S. attack on Iran has rocked the 2028 Vance-Rubio ticket favored by President Trump’s MAGA following and predicted by polls and political analysts.

Vice President J.D. Vance, who has maintained a large and consistent lead in the polls over other potential 2028 GOP presidential candidates, has largely remained on the sidelines since Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28.

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

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

As the buzz around 2028 candidates grows louder, the president has lightheartedly pitted Mr. Vance against Mr. Rubio, the administration’s vaunted multi-tasker who is now one of the war’s main tacticians and public-facing defenders.

“Marco’s gonna go down, I think, as the best secretary of state in history. That’s my opinion,” Mr. Trump said earlier this month at a summit for 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, the heir apparent to Mr. Trump, has called Mr. Rubio his closest friend in the administration. Mr. Rubio said if Mr. Vance runs for the GOP nomination, he’ll support his candidacy.

But Mr. Rubio is suddenly thrust into a much more prominent role in the administration that has overshadowed Mr. Vance, who campaigned against “stupid wars” and sending U.S. troops to fight overseas.

Mr. Vance isn’t criticizing the Iran war, but his tepid public backing is at odds with some in the MAGA world. At the same time, his lack of vocal opposition has raised concerns that he’ll be viewed as flip-flopping on his previously unequivocal opposition to overseas wars and specifically a war with Iran.

Trump administration officials leaked to news outlets last week that the vice president was “skeptical” of launching the war, which has now stretched into a third week, resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. troops and wreaked havoc on the oil prices and U.S. stock market.

The leak conflicted with earlier reports that Mr. Vance advised Mr. Trump to attack Iran after the Islamic Republic violated the red line set by the president on its weapons program.

That’s consistent with Mr. Vance’s statements even before the 2024 election.

“A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran—but not these weak little bombing runs. If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard,” Mr. Vance said at the Republican National Convention in July 2024 during an interview with Fox News.

Mr. Vance appeared on Fox News during primetime three days after the strikes were launched, becoming one of the first top administration officials to make the talk show rounds to defend the bombardment.

“The primary objective,” Mr. Vance said on the show, “is preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb.”

Mr. Vance, however, declined to talk publicly about how he advised the president ahead of the strikes. When a reporter asked him about it in North Carolina on Friday, Mr. Vance said he couldn’t disclose the information because it was given in a classified setting.

A spokesperson for Mr. Vance said the media has been wrong in its reporting about the vice president’s stance on the Iran strikes.

“The vice president has been the focus of constant leaks left and right by people trying to project their views onto him. And as a result, there have been countless inconsistent accounts of the vice president’s views published, which shows the mainstream media has no idea what they’re talking about. The vice president, a proud member of the president’s national security team, keeps his counsel to the president private,” 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 advisor.

“Marco has been doing an amazing job as secretary of state and national security advisor and others, and as a result, he has earned a lot of respect within the party, from all parts of it, from the MAGA base to the neocon establishment,” said Buzz Jacobs, a Republican strategist and former Rubio campaign adviser. “He has proven himself. And as a result, that has many people talking about him becoming the presidential nominee of the party instead of the vice president.”

Mr. Rubio has staunchly defended the U.S. strikes on Iran, which were carried out jointly with Israel, as a move to stop Iran from ramping up missile production that would enable its nuclear weapons acquisition.

“The purpose of this is to destroy that missile capability. What they are trying to do and have been trying to do for a very long time is build a conventional weapons capability as a shield where they can hide behind, meaning there would come a point where they have so many conventional missiles, so many drones, and can inflict so much damage, that no one can do anything about their nuclear program,” Mr Rubio said. “That is what they were trying to do, to put themselves in a place of immunity where the damage they can inflict on the region would be so high that no one can do anything about their nuclear program or their nuclear ambitions.”

Mr. Trump has frequently complimented Mr. Rubio in public and earlier this month asked GOP donors at a private function at his Mar-a-Lago club which of the two men he should endorse in 2028. Donors cheered louder for Mr. Rubio than for Mr. Vance.

Mr. Rubio’s 2028 prospects are skyrocketing in prediction markets.

Mr. Rubio’s chances of winning the presidency in 2028 were a mere 6% in December. By March 12, the federally regulated prediction platform Kalshi put the odds of Mr. Rubio winning the presidency at 18%, just a point below Mr. Vance’s 19%.

Prediction markets are much different than voter opinion polls, and Mr. Vance remains the unequivocal leader in 2028 public polling.

The war has so far done little to knock down Mr. Vance’s double-digit lead over all hypothetical competitors in a 2028 GOP primary. He’s also won the endorsement of Turning Point USA, a political action committee that was key in turning out the youth vote for the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024.

A McLaughlin and Associates poll taken March 4-9, during the second full week of the Iran war, showed Mr. Vance leading the GOP field with 36%, followed by Donald Trump Jr. with 16%

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

Mr. Vance remains far, far ahead of any other potential GOP candidate in the Real Clear Politics polling average.

GOP strategist and former Trump appointee to the State Department Matthew Bartlett said the Republican voter base is both comfortable and excited about Mr. Vance leading the ticket in 2028.

The Iran war won’t dampen the enthusiasm, he said.

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

Mr. Trump praised both men a week before the war started at a meeting of his nearly formed Board of Peace.

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

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

“Marco does it with a velvet glove, but it’s a kill, right? The result is the same. They do it very differently,” he said.

Asked in October about potential friction between the two during a podcast with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, Mr. Vance brushed it aside.

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