President Donald Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio is not expected to leave his position.
When asked during a CBS “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday whether Rubio would stay. Trump said, “I think so.”
“I mean, he certainly loves it, and he’s doing great. He’s doing a fantastic job,” the president said.
Rubio, 55, has been the secretary of state since Jan. 21, 2025, one day after Trump’s second term began. Two Senate-confirmed secretaries of state served during Trump’s first term.
The State Department earlier in November dismissed a report that Rubio was expected to step down and launch a 2028 presidential bid.
“This is completely baseless fake news from made-up anonymous ‘sources,’” Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said in a post on social media.
Presidents can only serve two terms. Rubio, a former U.S. senator representing Florida and a contestant in the 2016 race, is among the prominent Republicans who could vie to become the next commander-in-chief.
Trump told “60 Minutes” that he would probably endorse a Republican, but not necessarily.
“We have a tremendous bench. I mean, I have so many people that I have great relationships with,” he said.
When asked who would be on the list besides Vice President JD Vance, Trump brought up Rubio, prompting the question of whether Rubio would be staying as secretary of state.
“The ones they think about, but there are many others, and I’d rather not mention their names,” Trump added later regarding 2028.
“There’s some senators that are excellent. I know them all, I like them a lot. So I may or may not get involved. I don’t know. Maybe I’m better off not getting involved.”
Rubio on Sunday declined to talk about the Republican losses in the midterm elections but said that the war with Iran—which both Trump and Vance said played a role in the losses—was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and came after Trump “identified a very real threat.”
“He addressed it even though, oftentimes, the right thing to do for the country–confronting difficult challenges for the security of our country–doing it isn’t necessarily popular but necessary,” Rubio said in Florida before he headed to a meeting of foreign ministers in France.
“There used to be bipartisan acknowledgment that a nuclear Iran would be completely unacceptable and dangerous for the United States—not just Israel, not just the Middle East—the whole world and the United States.”
Trump has said that he had to launch the war in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and using it.
The last direct peace talks between Iran and the United States took place earlier in the year.
“I wouldn’t say we’re … on the verge of a breakthrough,” Rubio said.
“The president would always prefer to solve this and every problem diplomatically. Sometimes that’s not possible, unfortunately. But if there’s a chance to do it, we’ll explore it. Right now, it hasn’t been very productive, because the Iranian demands are simply not just unacceptable but, in some cases, outrageous and ridiculous and really not realistic.”
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