Major 'roadblocks' for Trump official with presidential ambitions

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks down during a press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 5, 2026.

While many officials in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet have become ensnared in scandals,, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has often been discussed as the one exception. But according to W. James Antle III of the American Conservative, the case for Rubio is overstated, and he faces a number of roadblocks that may frustrate his presidential ambitions.

There has been talk for some time of a “shadow” effort within the White House to build support for a Rubio Oval Office bid, and growing buzz around the idea ever since he was tapped for a Vatican visit to smooth things over with the Pope. And as Antle notes, riffing on Rubio’s affinity for working classic rap lyrics into this speech, “It’s not totally insane in the membrane, as the kids said 33 years ago. President Donald Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser is a talented guy. Rubio has now been in the national spotlight for over 16 years and has matured since his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination a decade ago.”

But Antle warns not to give the secretary too much credit, writing that “Rubio is also being feted as a throwback to pre-Trump Republicanism, which is also why he is currently being overrated for 2028. That’s not to say that a Rubio nomination can’t happen. There are, however, some roadblocks that are being widely ignored in favor of viral clips that make people misty-eyed for the return of Ronald Reagan.”

Anyone suggesting Rubio as a vehicle to bridge the Republican party back to a more classic GOP, writes Antle, are those “who would like to see a major departure from Trump not just in style but also substance. He would need to retain these supporters while remaining in Trump’s good graces. He probably needs Trump’s explicit blessing to leapfrog Vance. Ask Nikki Haley, who has a similar appeal to Rubio, how easy it is to walk this tightrope.”

What’s more, “a lot of Rubio’s admirers imagine that the Republican Party needs an articulate defender of Trump’s Iran War. If Iran is still dominating the conversation by the midterm elections, much less 2028, that assumption is going to be severely tested, to put it mildly.”

Another “underrated challenge," according to Antle: "The political conditions would have to be bad enough for Vance to be vulnerable in the primary but good enough that the secretary of state would have a decent chance in the general election.” While that’s not impossible, the headwinds the Republicans face in 2028 due to backlash from Trump’s failed policies mean that a candidate from the president’s camp would have to be a supreme communicator to overcome the opposition. But as Antle notes, Rubio hasn’t won in the Republican primaries since 2012 and hasn’t won a national election since 2004, and his message didn’t resonate in any major way in 2016.

Rubio has also been lucky in terms of media coverage. While the tone has so far been a largely favorable discussion of his fortune having avoided political snares like the Iran negotiations, it very easily could shift into stories questioning whether he’s doing his job.

Finally, Antle argues that there is something about Rubio’s attitude that suggests he’s not ready to meet the moment. “Trump’s own second-term appeals to ‘morning in America’ at a time when voters are more in an American Carnage mood have generally fallen flat,” and that should worry Rubio, who has been intentionally courting a Reaganite image.

“While Rubio wants to be president and Trump wants his successor to work for it,” concludes Antle, “his calm and good humor suggest that he isn’t running yet. He does not feel the pressure of a campaign. He has the luxury of time, and when that is no longer true, things may be different.”

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