President Donald Trump declined to endorse Vice President JD Vance for a potential 2028 run for president, saying it is “too early” to make that call while the midterm elections are coming up.
“Well, I’ll tell you this — he’s a very talented person, and he’s a very good person, but we’ve literally, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday:
“No sir,” Vance concurred. “I said that too.”
Trump added, “You know, who would believe that? I don’t talk about it with him, he doesn’t talk about it. It’s early. We are very early right now. We have to get through the midterms, we’ll see how it goes.”
Just the day before, Vance told journalist Mark Halperin that he believed Trump would endorse him if he decided to run for president.
When asked if he thought Trump would endorse him “right away” if he launched a campaign for 2028, Vance replied, “I would think so, but I don’t know, man. I haven’t talked to him about it.”
Halperin pressed further, asking if it would be “weird” if the president considered not giving Vance his endorsement.
“No, I don’t think it would be weird. I mean, again, I think I would get his endorsement, but I also think there is 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 this race play out and not, like, preemptively pre-judge the results.'”
In that same interview, Vance stated that he has not yet made up his mind on his plans for 2028.
“I just haven’t focused on it,” he told Halperin, before adding that the additional pressure that comes with vying for the Oval Office might be too much for him.
“Like sometimes you know media scrutiny, pressure, policy. I can be terrible at it… so I don’t know,” Vance said.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.