Vice President JD Vance said Monday he cannot be sure President Donald Trump would endorse him immediately if he decides to run for president in 2028, even as he believes an endorsement would eventually come.
Vance made the comments during an interview with journalist Mark Halperin on his platform 2Way. The interview aired weeks ahead of the midterm elections, with Republicans and the White House focused on keeping control of Congress.
Vance said his immediate priority is the midterms and that he has not decided whether he will seek the presidency in 2028. “I think if I run, the president will endorse me,” he said.
When Halperin pressed on whether that endorsement would come “right away,” Vance was less certain. “I would think so, but I don’t know, man,” he said. “I haven’t talked to him about it.”
Halperin suggested it could be “weird” for Vance to tell Trump about his 2028 ambitions only to have Trump withhold an endorsement. Vance disagreed.
“No, I don’t think it’d be weird,” Vance said. “Again, I think I would get his endorsement, but I also think there’s something to be said for people actually running their own race, and because the president’s endorsement is so dispositive, you could absolutely see a scenario where the president says, ‘You know what? We need to let, like, this race play out and not, like, preemptively prejudge the results.'”
Earlier in the interview, Halperin raised past comments from Vance stating that “whoever the president endorses for the Republican nomination will ultimately win the Republican primary.” Vance said that dynamic holds in both parties to some degree, but argued Trump’s endorsement carries unusual weight because Trump won the trust of ordinary voters while the Republican establishment initially rejected him.
“That’s the person they say, ‘Okay, if Trump is with a guy, that must mean that the elites are against that guy,'” Vance said. “I think that Trump’s endorsement just carries more weight than any political endorsement in history because of that. Obviously, the voters are gonna decide. Donald Trump is only one vote of many, but I think his endorsement is still the most powerful.”
The remarks come after Trump floated the idea of pitting Vance against Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his backing in 2028. At a May Rose Garden Club event, Trump called Vance and Rubio a “dream team” but has declined to say which of the two he would favor at the top of a future ticket.
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to the White House for comment.
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