Vice President JD Vance said President Trump occasionally needles him about the 2028 presidential race and suggested he believes the former president would back him if he ultimately chooses to run.
“I never bring it up. But sure, the president brings it up a lot — sometimes publicly, sometimes privately,” Vance said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”
“The president’s a political animal. He loves this stuff. He’s fascinated by it,” Vance added. “It’s not coy, and it’s not positive or negative. He kind of talks about it like, ‘What’s going to happen?’”
Vance has repeatedly shown frustration with questions about 2028, telling reporters he does not plan to decide on a White House bid until after the midterm elections.
Even as Vance has sought to downplay the speculation, Trump has kept the conversation alive in public, at one point jokingly asking audiences whether they would rather see Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio emerge as the GOP nominee.
“Who likes JD Vance? Who likes Marco Rubio?” Trump said at an event last month.
“All right. Sounds like a good ticket.”
Rubio has publicly ruled out the possibility of seeking the GOP presidential nomination if Vance does. Trump hasn’t publicly sent a strong indication on whether he’d back Rubio or Vance.
“I have no doubt that the president of the United States is going to be very supportive of anything that I ultimately decide to do,” Vance said. “But we really just haven’t talked about what that thing will be.”
Vance reiterated his well-worn answer on 2028 questions that he intends to make a decision after the midterm elections
“Usha and I will absolutely sit down and talk about what comes next for our family,” Vance explained, stressing the discussion will happen after the midterms. “The way I make decisions is, I try not to make them until I absolutely must.”
Vance gave the interview while promoting his second memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” which is set for release on Tuesday. While discussing the new book, second lady Usha Vance recounted how the murder of Charlie Kirk inspired them to have a fourth child.
“I think it really heightened JD’s sense that he’d been talking about this for a while, this sense that there was this possibility of having another kid whom he could love as much as the three that we had,” Usha explained.
“And it really did crystallize for [him], that sense that if you could have that other child, then you would have nothing to regret,” she added. “And if we couldn’t have that other child, then we were very happy with the children that we had. So, it was very powerful, what [Erika] said about her own family.”
