‘Almost Unanimous’: GOP Heavyweights Roared for Rubio Over Vance at Mar-a-Lago Meeting With Trump

(AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

A group of about 25 GOP donors expressed their strong preference for Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vice President JD Vance in the 2028 GOP presidential primary during a February 28 get together at Mar-a-Lago, according to a revealing new NBC News story.

“In the early hours of Feb. 28, President Donald Trump and his administration joined Israel in launching a wave of strikes on Iran that would reverberate across the Middle East. That night, he was schmoozing at Mar-a-Lago with some of his top administration officials and political donors, with a pressing question: Marco or JD?” reported NBC.

After the president posed his question to the crowd, those present “overwhelmingly indicated Secretary of State Marco Rubio through their cheering, according to two people who were at the event.”

“It was almost unanimous for Marco,” said one attendee.

“Yeah, that’s right. It was clear, at least that night,” said another.

A third disputed that characterization, arguing the reaction was more “evenly split.”

Axios’s Marc Caputo also indicated that Trump had been hearing a lot Rubio hype during a Monday afternoon appearance on CNN.

“We wrote about this at Axios a little while ago, which is Donald Trump likes to poll people about, ‘Hey, what do you think about 2028? Who do you the candidate should be?’ And he asks, ‘Marco Rubio or JD Vance?’ He doesn’t want them to run against each other, he wants them to to run with each other,” said Caputo. “But he’s getting a lot of more positive feedback, Trump is, about Rubio at the top of the ticket than Vance. A lot that is just sort of recency bias, and the fact that Marco Rubio has a portfolio: secretary of state, it puts him in the front and center of global affairs, and national security advisor, it puts him directly in the White House. The vice president doesn’t quite have that.”

Vance currently boasts a heavy lead in early 2028 primary polls, with Rubio coming in a distant second. The president’s endorsement, should he make one, is expected to play an enormous role once the contest for the Republican nomination begins in earnest.

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