President Donald Trump with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Beijing, China, May 14, 2026. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
An extensive passage from an upcoming book exposing the inner workings of the second Trump administration has leaked to Axios, and it once again shows his proclivity for pitting his would-be MAGA successors against each other.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, veteran New York Times reporters who have extensively covered Trump's time in politics, are set to release a new book next week, Regime Change, chronicling the chaotic goings-on behind the scenes of his return to the White House. So far, early previews for the book have already caused major headaches for the administration, exposing the panicked reaction of top officials to the Epstein crisis while Trump tried to bury it.
The latest glimpse of the book has leaked to Axios, and features a description of a private dinner at which Trump asked NewsCorp tycoon Rupert Murdoch what he thought about Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as potential 2028 nominees for president. Trump has reportedly been known to ask attendees at private gatherings similar questions, and is also said to relish pitting his allies against each other.
According to Axios, Murdoch's reaction was far from encouraging for the vice president, as he now weighs whether or not to even bother running in 2028.
"In a scene from the forthcoming 'Regime Change,' President Trump asks a guest at a private dinner last year to compare Vice President Vance to Secretary of State Marco Rubio," Axios detailed. "Trump often does that to stir the pot on 2028 speculation. But this time, the judge was Rupert Murdoch. And with Vance and Rubio sitting awkwardly at the table, Murdoch was notably more effusive about Rubio. The media mogul had privately tried to talk Trump out of choosing Vance as his running mate in 2024."
The report continued later: "Trump's parlor game — recounted in a 3,000-word passage in 'Regime Change,' by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, out next Tuesday — shows that Vance, as the authors write, can be sure Trump won't 'make it easy for him' to get the 2028 GOP nomination."
According to the leaked passage, when Trump pressed Murdoch about Vance at the dinner, held in October of 2025, he said, "Well... I think JD has the potential to be great." When pressed about Rubio, he was much more effusive: "Marco is brilliant." Guests present at the dinner supposedly "would talk privately about the moment for weeks after the dinner."