The most sought-after endorsement in Republican politics is still President Donald Trump’s to give, and his own vice president hasn’t asked for it.
Trump shut his eyes and shook his head at the White House on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, as a reporter began asking whether he would back Vice President JD Vance’s likely 2028 presidential bid, then cut the question off mid-question. Vance watched from behind him. “He’s a very talented person and a very good person, but literally, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it,” Trump said, adding that it was “very early.”
Vance signaled he was in the same place, saying he had made that point himself. Trump has not endorsed anyone for 2028 and has not named a preferred candidate.
“I Don’t Know, Man”
The moment came a day after Vance sat down with journalist Mark Halperin aboard Air Force Two for an interview on “2WAY TONIGHT” that aired Monday, Oct. 19. Halperin put a panel’s prediction to him: that Vance was 99 percent to 100 percent certain to run, and that Trump would hold his endorsement back for a long stretch to “toy” with him.
Vance said he believes the endorsement would come. Whether it would come immediately was another matter.
“I would think so, but I don’t know, man,” Vance said. “I haven’t talked to him about it.”
Why a Delay Wouldn’t Be Weird
Halperin pushed back, suggesting it would be strange for Vance to tell the president he was running and hear that Trump wanted to think about it.
“No, I don’t think it’d be weird,” Vance said. “Again, I think I would get his endorsement.”
“But I also think there’s something to be said for people actually running their own race,” he said, “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, like, this race play out and not, like, preemptively prejudge the results.'”
Having never raised it with Trump, Vance said, he could not speak to the president’s thinking on the question. In the same interview he declined to endorse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his reelection bid, breaking with Trump, who has publicly backed the prime minister.
From Third Place to a Senate Seat
Vance knows the arithmetic firsthand. Running for the Ohio Senate seat he won in 2022, he had slipped to third in polling behind Republican rivals Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel in the weeks before the primary, and a last-minute endorsement from Trump turned the race around.
The pattern has held elsewhere. Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Texas GOP Senate primary.
Vance has called Trump’s backing the most powerful political endorsement there is, arguing that Republican voters trust the president precisely because party elites did not. He has also said that “the voters are gonna decide” and that Trump “is only one vote of many.”
The Other Name Trump Keeps Praising
Trump has teased pitting Vance against Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the 2028 nomination. He called the pair a “dream team” and floated a possible ticket without endorsing either man. Vance has joked about the rivalry by invoking Trump’s former reality show, “The Apprentice.”
For now, the vice president keeps pointing at November. He says he has not made up his mind about 2028, wants to elect as many Republicans as possible in early November, and has acknowledged there is a chance he does not run at all, citing his wife, Usha Vance, who is not a fan of politics, and the couple’s four small children. A New York Times aggregation of recent polls shows him far ahead of the rest of the Republican field.
In early October, Rubio was in Athens, Greece, delivering a speech on the importance of Western civilization. Trump, who branded him “Little Marco” during his first presidential run, called him “a master” at a Hispanic Heritage Month event at the White House, and “an unbelievable man, really amazing.”