President Trump Tells 60 Minutes He May Not Endorse a Successor — "Maybe I'm Better Off Not Getting Involved" — While Calling Marco Rubio "Great," Saying Rubio Is Staying as Secretary of State and Doing a Fantastic Job, and Calling the Republican Bench Tremendous
Monday, November 9, 2026
President Trump has put the Republican Party on notice that its next presidential race may get no help from him at the top. In a 60 Minutes interview aired Sunday, Trump was asked about a successor and the 2028 Republican contest — and said he may not endorse anyone at all. “Maybe I’m better off not getting involved,” he said.
The answer sets up the party’s future on his terms: instead of an early anointing, Trump is leaving the field open and letting the contest run. It is the forward-looking piece of the same interview in which he spoke about the midterms the party has just come through.
Trump paired the no-endorsement answer with a clear statement about his current team. He called Secretary of State Marco Rubio “great,” said Rubio is staying as Secretary of State, and said Rubio is doing a fantastic job — a public vote of confidence in the man running American foreign policy while the administration works through the Iran talks and the other files on his desk.
And he pointed to the depth behind them. Trump called the Republican bench tremendous — his stated case that the party’s field of potential successors is deep, and that its strength does not rest on any single name waiting for his blessing.
This is the same 60 Minutes interview in which Trump said his mass deportation policy “might be too tough” and acknowledged that the Iran war cost Republicans in the midterms — moments ProfiloPolitics covered in our earlier reports on the interview. The successor answer is the part of that conversation that looks past this term and toward 2028.
What this means: for ordinary voters, Trump’s stance, as he states it, keeps the 2028 Republican contest open — decided by the candidates’ own records in front of voters rather than settled early by one endorsement from the sitting president. Rubio staying at the State Department means continuity in the foreign-policy team voters are watching on the Iran talks and the administration’s other negotiations. And his “tremendous bench” point is his stated case that the party he leads is bigger than one successor. Those are his stated positions; the race itself will test them.
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