Marco Rubio EMERGES as possible 2028 FRONTRUNNER as Vance STRUGGLES with Iran: Erin Maguire | RISING

0:05 Welcome back to Rising.

0:06 Aaron, what's on your mind today?

0:07 Yes, Lindsey.

0:08 Thank you.

0:09 The Republican Party has not formally started

0:12 the process of picking a 2028 nominee, but among Republican voters,

0:16 the conversation about who comes after President Trump is already underway.

0:21 And no Republican wants to look too eager to inherit

0:24 the MAGA movement before Trump is ready to hand it off.

0:27 The people viewed as early frontrunners understand that.

0:30 And they're largely operating within the rules

0:32 of the Trump era Republican Party.

0:35 This week those too early for frontrunner status

0:38 names were out shaping very different public images.

0:41 J.D.

0:41 Vance was in Iowa, still

0:43 the proving ground for Republican presidential hopefuls,

0:46 campaigning with battleground Congressman Zach Nunn,

0:49 and selling the Trump agenda in one

0:50 of the most politically important states in the country.

0:53 Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio started the week in the White

0:56 House briefing room delivering a widely

0:59 circulated answer on American exceptionalism.

1:02 I mean, my hope for America is what it's always been.

1:04 I think it's the hope I hope we all share.

1:06 We want it to continue to be

1:07 the place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything.

1:10 Where you're not limited by the circumstances of your birth,

1:13 by the color of your skin, by your ethnicity,

1:14 but frankly, it's a place where you are

1:16 able to overcome challenges and achieve your full potential.

1:20 Then yesterday, Rubio was in Rome meeting with Pope Leo the 14th,

1:25 the first American Pope,

1:26 while helping manage the diplomatic aftermath of the Iran ceasefire.

1:30 And while Rubio was moving through Rome and the Vatican on the world stage,

1:35 Kahl she's 2028 market briefly moved in ahead of Vance for the first time.

1:40 Because these two men are increasingly viewed

1:42 as the early frontrunners for the Republican nomination in 2028,

1:46 and the contrast between them is beginning to define

1:49 what the next phase of Republican politics could look like.

1:53 Even during the vice presidential vetting process,

1:55 there was a broad assumption inside Republican politics

1:58 that Vance was being positioned as the MAGA heir apparent.

2:02 The intellectual face of a Republican party

2:04 moving away from the neo-conservative foreign policy era.

2:08 But the Iran conflict exposed something

2:10 that's always existed beneath the surface.

2:12 A fault line inside the Republican party

2:15 over what America first actually means in practice.

2:18 And it gave Rubio a lane he didn't previously have.

2:22 Vance built much of his political identity around skepticism of interventionism

2:27 and the idea that Trump represented

2:28 a Republican party adverse to foreign conflict.

2:31 He once authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled Trump's best foreign policy,

2:36 not starting any wars.

2:38 Now he's publicly defending a conflict he reportedly had reservations

2:43 about internally to voters who closely associated him with that worldview.

2:48 And to be fair, Vance is speaking

2:49 on behalf of President Trump and Trump's administration.

2:52 It's part of the job.

2:54 But politically it creates a challenge.

2:56 At a Turning Point USA event last month,

2:59 Vance got heckled over the Iran conflict and acknowledged that quote,

3:02 "A lot of young voters don't love the policy

3:05 we have in the Middle East." End quote.

3:07 And it highlighted a real divide that's

3:09 been building inside the MAGA coalition for years.

3:12 The anti-interventionist wing of MAGA isn't French.

3:16 It's younger voters, newer Republican voters,

3:19 and many of the low-propensity voters Trump brought into the coalition in 2024.

3:24 Voters who believed Trump represented a break

3:26 from the neo-conservative Republican foreign policy model.

3:30 They were drawn to it They were drawn to a version

3:32 of America first that emphasized restraint

3:35 and skepticism of endless foreign entanglements.

3:38 And now many of them are trying to figure out

3:41 whether that is still what this movement stands for stands for.

3:45 That is why the political positioning here matters.

3:48 If the ceasefire holds, if the administration looks strong,

3:52 if the conflict is contained,

3:54 Rubio is positioned to benefit more visibly because he is

3:57 publicly carrying so much of the diplomatic and executive facing role.

4:01 But if things deteriorate, Vance may have slightly more room politically

4:06 with skeptical parts of the MAGA base because

4:08 it was widely reported he had reservations about

4:12 deeper escalation before ultimately defending the administration publicly.

4:16 That dynamic could matter enormously in the 2028 Republican primary.

4:21 And the irony is real.

4:23 Rubio spent years being cast as the hawk.

4:26 Now he looks more settled to parts of the MAGA coalition than

4:29 the Vance than the vice president who built his brand on restraint.

4:34 Trump has reportedly even pitted the two men against each other at donor events,

4:38 asking rooms for shows of support for both men.

4:41 And what does the rest of the country think about their odds?

4:44 Rubio was sitting around 6% on Cal sheet earlier this year.

4:48 Yesterday he briefly hit 19%.

4:51 The way too early tea leaves could say this is a sign of something building.

4:55 Prediction markets don't determine elections,

4:58 but they often reveal the politically engaged people begin sensing

5:02 movement before the rest of the political system catches up.

5:06 Rubio says he won't run if Vance runs, and maybe he means it.

5:10 But in politics every no I'm not running is a no until it isn't.

5:14 But even before that decision is made by either man,

5:17 the first real fight over what Trumpism

5:19 looks like after Trump may already be underway.

5:23 So I think for this, it really is about

5:25 the differentiation in the Republican Party on foreign policy,

5:29 which really has been seen up until the Iran portion,

5:32 one of President Trump's most successful portions.

5:34 And now that he's in the most con- the conflicted part of his foreign policy,

5:40 it's playing out within the party now.

5:42 What do you think of how both men

5:44 are handling it for the Republicans going into 2028.

5:48 Well, it seems to me, and this is eye-opening cuz I think my perspective

5:51 shifted this week after I saw the results of Indiana

5:54 cuz it wasn't like there were um primary two

5:58 Republicans that didn't fully align with the President Trump's agenda.

6:01 There was just one person who said they didn't want to re-district thing,

6:05 and one person [clears throat] that said I

6:06 fully support anything Trump's doing plus re-district thing.

6:08 And so, the other people who just said no

6:10 to re-districting got wiped off the map for one issue.

6:13 So, I know that one issue, specifically one as big as foreign policy,

6:17 could be the one issue that throws you off the map even

6:19 if everything else about you says

6:21 that you support President Trump wholeheartedly.

6:23 And I know that President Trump still

6:24 has a stronghold over the Republican party,

6:27 and we'll see how that plays out in a general election.

6:29 But, he's president during the midterms, so that matters.

6:31 But, we're talking about the next general election.

6:34 Um I think that the leak that we saw or the information we saw around J.D.

6:38 Vance was pretty intentional.

6:40 Obviously, I have no real hard information or proof

6:42 about that, but it seems like a protection to kind of begin to do what we

6:46 said in the last segment that Kamala wasn't doing.

6:50 Um there has to be a strategy for you to have like an off-ramp to say, "Well,

6:54 I actually was on not on record, but you can see there were several

6:57 swirlings of my feelings about these things." So,

6:59 if it goes terribly wrong and we are

7:02 in the next election still in a war with Iran, which everyone hopes we're not,

7:06 then you have something to say about how you did you think this is

7:09 a whole different strategy you would take to get out of this war.

7:12 And I think that's I think that's really correct,

7:14 but that leaves Vance in the same position Kamala was in in the last cycle.

7:18 If he does run, is to have to stand

7:20 on a debate stage and differentiate himself cuz he can't say,

7:23 "You know, I privately had reservations about the Iran war."

7:26 is still president While Trump IS STILL

7:27 PRESIDENT THE SOCIAL is going to light up.

7:29 I mean, that's the end of your MAGA career right there if you say that.

7:32 So, he puts himself So, how does Vance then you know,

7:35 we don't know how the foreign conflicts play out, right?

7:37 We don't know what this looks like tomorrow,

7:40 let alone Wednesday when I mentioned China in a previous segment that like

7:43 the president wants this done before he goes abroad but to to to November 2028.

7:48 I mean who knows what all of this looks like

7:50 but to the point that they've all got to tread super carefully.

7:53 Can't be too eager.

7:55 You can't be like Vance Rubio always saying

7:57 no I'm not running no I'm not running.

7:58 Nikki Haley says no she's not running as well

8:01 cuz a no is very easy to become a yes.

8:03 I changed my mind.

8:04 I talked to my family.

8:05 I prayed about it.

8:06 I got to a yes.

8:08 It's very easy to change that position and look

8:10 like you're not flip-flopping because it's been so many years.

8:14 But they have to be so careful and if you

8:17 are Vance right now you're actually in the hardest position.

8:21 Right because he's the second in charge so it's like why didn't you speak up?

8:23 Why didn't you do more?

8:24 Why didn't you say something?

8:25 But Rubio has been positioned from the thousand hats

8:27 that he wore and the jobs that he had.

8:30 That meme of him every time

8:32 Literally he's everything in the entire administration.

8:34 I think that he's literally had every job so he can argue

8:37 almost anything with a less responsibility because he's not the vice president.

8:41 I literally was in this role doing this job.

8:43 So he has a little bit more of an out and I think it's interesting

8:46 because a lot of what people don't like

8:48 is the bureaucracy of who should come next.

8:50 It's kind of like the Obama Hillary Clinton thing.

8:53 Obama's like no I'm going now and Hillary was mad about it obviously.

8:56 He skipped his turn in line but for the moment he was the right candidate.

8:59 History tells us that.

9:00 It worked out great.

9:01 you always have to strike.

9:02 It never matters.

9:03 There's never a good time to run for office.

9:05 If you want to run you just got to go for it.

9:08 Right.

9:08 For some people like with Biden there's several instances that have to work

9:11 out perfectly for it to be your time cuz you were next in line.

9:14 But we know had anything went differently Biden potentially would have never

9:17 been president with the the conundrum of a situation the country was in.

9:21 It was an anomaly of an election.

9:23 Yes.

9:24 Sometimes that waiting in line stuff just never comes to fruition.

9:26 So I think Vance is waiting in line and people are naturally like I remember

9:30 we had a former head of the RNC here who was talking about obviously J.D.

9:34 Vance is going to be the person.

9:36 And it's like not so obvious it four years out it's easy to say that, you know,

9:39 when I first started on Rising,

9:40 but as we get closer to election day, nobody knows.

9:43 It's a toss-up.

9:44 Nobody knew who Obama was before he threw his name

9:46 in the hat for the most part in 2007, and then everyone knew who he was.

9:49 So, I'm excited to see on both sides, right, who pops up.

9:53 I think Republican side is a little bit harder because they had were in power.

9:56 So, Democratic side we might see a surprise pop up,

9:59 but I wouldn't be surprised if Rubio just full speed ahead after this.

10:03 Yeah, it's going to be really interesting.

10:04 But, I Yeah.

10:05 Listen, the way too early brackets,

10:07 the way too early tea leaves, I'm all for it.

10:09 And also, like, what does that relationship look like as you work

10:12 close to each other and see each other on meetings almost every day,

10:15 but you're competing Apparently, these two of them are very close in the admin.

10:19 Apparently, they're very close.

10:20 So, listen, you know, boys can be aggressive.

10:22 They don't They don't care as much as girls about those personal relationships.

10:25 They're going to be like stepping on each

10:26 other on their way out of the White House.

10:27 [laughter] Up next, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made some comments

10:32 about billionaires that have rubbed people the wrong way,

10:35 especially on the right.

10:36 We'll be right back after this.