As much as I hate to say it, Trump is the favorite to win the presidential election in November. If elected, and assuming he respects the Constitution’s two-term limit (a big if, admittedly), he will likely be the favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2028, regardless of who he picks as his vice president. Trump’s No. 2 could determine whether the Republican Party leans more toward MAGA extremism or returns to more mainstream conservatism.
The choice will be particularly important in foreign policy, where the president holds the greatest discretion and where the differences of opinion are stark between MAGA isolationists like Trump and traditional Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who defend U.S. global leadership.
While Trump could pull a surprise at any time, the three finalists for the No. 2 spot are said to be Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. All three are born-again Trump supporters who were once sharp critics of the man they now serve. (Vance once said Trump could become “the American Hitler,” Rubio called him a “con man,” and Burgum said he would never do business with Trump because “you’re judged by the people you hang out with.”) But while they agree on hypocrisy, the three differ on policy views, particularly foreign policy.
For allies worried about the future of U.S. foreign policy if Trump returns to the White House (which is most countries), Vance would be the worst choice; Rubio and Burgum would be more reassuring choices. Sure, all three profess to be MAGA devotees, but Rubio and Burgum never sound like they mean it. Vance, by contrast, sounds like a true believer with the fervor of a convert.
A lengthy Politico article about Vance’s evolving views in March was headlined “Is There Anything More Radical Than MAGA? J.D. Vance Dreams About It.” The article went on to note that “Unlike Trump’s more traditional Republican supporters, Vance’s New Right allies see Trump as just the first step in a broader populist-nationalist revolution that is already reshaping the American right — and, if they get their way, may soon lead to a reshaping of the entire country.”
Vance reinforced those concerns in May on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” when he praised Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán, a hero of the authoritarian right, for making “some smart decisions that Americans should learn from.” He was referring to Orbán’s attacks on academic freedom, including expelling the prestigious Central European University, founded by George Soros, from Hungary.
During his brief tenure as a senator, Vance was a leading voice against U.S. aid to Ukraine. “To be honest with you, I don’t care what happens to Ukraine,” he told Stephen K. Bannon in 2022. In a May speech at the Quincy Institute, an isolationist think tank, Vance said, “I don’t believe it’s in the U.S. interest to continue to fund the virtually never-ending Ukrainian war.” In that speech, he was careful to argue that he was still in favor of aid to Israel because, unlike Ukraine, Israel is “fundamentally self-reliant.” (Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since 1946.) But some supporters of Israel question whether the Jewish state can count on an isolationist like Vance.
In his speech at the Quincy Institute, Vance made it clear that U.S. foreign policy should be focused on defending Christianity, not democracy: “A big part of the reason Americans care about Israel is because we remain the largest Christian-majority country in the world, which means the vast majority of our people believe that the Messiah was born, died and rose again on that tiny piece of land off the coast of the Mediterranean,” he said.
Vance then went on a tirade blaming “neocons” (often used as a synonym for Jewish conservatives) for ISIS’ attacks on Christian communities in the Middle East. “Neocon foreign policy continues to lead to the genocide of Christians,” he said, outrageously. In case there was any doubt, Vance made it clear that his foreign policy views are very different from McConnell’s: “Almost every foreign policy position he’s taken has been wrong.”
Despite their mental struggles to please their MAGA base, Rubio and Burgum have far more traditional foreign policy views and therefore should not be as much of a concern.
When Rubio became a senator in 2011, he was known as a clear-sighted internationalist, a champion of democracy promotion, and a supporter of immigration reform, and he negotiated a compromise that legalized millions of illegal immigrants. That’s why I served as a foreign policy adviser to Rubio’s 2016 campaign. How far has Rubio come? This year, he voted against aid to Ukraine because it was not packaged with measures to close the southern U.S. border. Of course, the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate negotiated a tough border bill, but Rubio appears to have voted against it because Trump wanted to keep immigration as a campaign issue.
The good news is that Rubio’s Ukraine vote appears to have been merely a dirty act of political expediency rather than a turn to isolationism. He is a highly-respected member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, and has denounced “Russian interference” in the 2016 election (at odds with Trump, who has called it a “hoax”).
Moreover, Rubio continues to advocate for a fairly interventionist US foreign policy based on defending freedom, particularly in Latin American countries such as Cuba and Venezuela. Speaking at the International Republican Institute in May, Rubio argued that the US should oppose “challenges to freedom and democracy” coming from “China, Russia, North Korea, Iran.” All of these countries are trying to create “alternatives to the US-led international order.” Unlike Vance, Rubio believes that the US-led order is worth defending.
Burgum has a weaker foreign policy record as governor than Vance or Rubio, but his words are reassuring. Burgum, who briefly ran in last year’s presidential election, called Russian President Putin a “thug” and argued that U.S. support for Ukraine was the “deal of the century” in an October speech at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank. He rejected the argument of people like Vance and Rubio that the U.S. cannot help Ukraine while protecting its borders, calling the position “too simplistic… a false trade-off.” He also made an impassioned call to support NATO, an organization that Trump tirelessly denounces. “When Putin attacks, we’ll all be united and fight back,” Burgum vowed. “That’s why NATO has been around since 1949.”
Finally, Burgum cited Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a shining city on a hill (a far cry from America as an apocalyptic hellscape), saying, “So to defeat our adversaries – all of whom don’t believe in freedom, all of whom believe in authoritarianism – we need leaders who understand the power of a free society and free markets.”
Expect Burgum to continue to support “the power of a free society and free markets” if he is chosen as Trump’s vice president. Even Rubio, for all his nasty opportunism, may return to his conservative roots once he is freed from the need to please Trump. Of the three leading vice presidential candidates, only Vance is likely to lead the Republican Party, and the country, in a more radical direction after Trump ultimately leaves office.
