President Donald Trump suggested on a podcast released Wednesday that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should run on the same ticket in the 2028 presidential election, though he didn’t say whom he preferred at the top.

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Post’s “Pod Force One,” Trump said, “I like them both,” responding to a question about who should run. “And I like them together,” he added.

As the vice president, Vance is the presumptive favorite for the Republican nomination and inheritor of Trump’s political movement. But the president has not thrown his full support behind him for the nomination, instead appearing to treat his endorsement as an open question, adding a layer of tension to their relationship.

Trump regularly solicits the opinions of people in his orbit about which man they would prefer at the top of the Republican ticket. His conversations on the subject have become a closely watched indicator of who might succeed him.

Often during such conversations, he muses that the two men should share the ticket.

“I don’t know how you beat them if they’re together,” he said during the interview aired Wednesday. “That would be a great team.”

Trump added that the two were “similar in a lot of ways” and had a good relationship. He said, however, that there was still a while before a decision had to be made and that Vance and Rubio would have to agree to run together.

Trump seemed to suggest that he was still regularly assessing the two men, calling them both “very talented.”

“I watch them all the time, you know,” he said. “I study them as they’re with each other. I find it very interesting.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jonathan Wolfe/Haiyun Jiang
c. 2026 The New York Times Company