Americanswers! Vance vs Rubio… who will take over from Trump in 2028?

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1:00Anthony:Well, there is news, not only about the relative balance of those two, but also potentially questions about other people coming to the fore. So we're going to talk a bit about that. Plus, Democrats have suffered a really big blow in their hopes to regain control of Congress. It's because of a court ruling in Virginia. Why does it matter so much? We'll be talking about that too. Answering your questions. Welcome to America Answers. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.

1:39This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump arrangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

1:53Anthony:Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And it's Anthony here in my home in Arlington, Virginia. And we are not joined this time round by Matt Chorley, who's doing other things. So Anthony and I are going to answer your questions just between the two of us to the extent that we can, which means he will answer them very well. And I'll do my best. Anthony, let's start with this business of the Republican succession, because it is something that is increasingly on people's minds. And we've had this question about 2028 and what happens. So Gorick in Malaga in Spain says, you guys are always on about possible Democratic candidates.

2:26Anthony:It's what about the Republicans? Will it boil down to a contest between JG Vance and Marco Rubio? Will there be a strong candidate out of left field? Will Trump anoint anyone? And on a side note, Gorick asks, how significant is it that both Vance and Rubio are practising Catholics in a country which culturally seems predominantly Protestant? Thank you, he says. Before we get to that question, let's hear from both of them, from Rubio and from Vance, because they've both gone viral in the last week or so. Though Vance, not for very happy reasons for him. Rubio, much the opposite. He was very much doing well.

3:05Anthony:So let's hear J.D. Vance stumbling a bit. And then after him, Marco Rubio answering a question from the press in the White House. I see Iowa farmers who need to get that E15 to market. What is this? What is a? Zach, you're going to have to help me out with her name here. I lost my page here. Okay. All right. Okay, there we go. Sarah Trone Garriott. There he is. I'm on the wrong page here. I got to ask you, what is your hope for America at a time such as this? Yeah, look, I mean, my hope for America is what it's always been. I think it's the hope I hope we all share. We want it to continue to be the place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything, where you're not limited by the circumstances of your birth, by the color of your skin, by your ethnicity, But frankly, it's a place where you are able to overcome challenges and achieve your full potential.

3:56I think that should be the goal of every country in the world, frankly. But I think in the U.S., we're not perfect. Our history is not one of perfection, but it's still better than anybody else's history. And ours is a story of perpetual improvement. Each generation. So, you know, I was watching Rubio there. That was his press conference at the White House last week, his first one filling in for Caroline Leavitt, the press secretary. He was on maternity leave now. And I remember seeing him answer that softball question from a Christian Broadcasting Network reporter and thinking, oh, my gosh, that sounds like a campaign stump speech.

4:29Well, I guess the Rubio people thought so, too, because just the next day they put it out on social media with patriotic music in the background and clips of Donald Trump and Americans doing their everyday jobs, very kind of rousing. It looked like the kind of thing that Rubio wants to put out if he is thinking about running for 2028. And then, of course, that clip of J.D. Vance in Ohio sounded a little less ready for primetime, stumbling a bit. I think that's a reflection of the fact that Rubio, he ran for president in 2016. He's been around for a while. He's a polished politician. The thing we have to keep reminding ourselves about J.D.

5:11Vance is he's only run for two offices. first for the Senate from Ohio and then for vice president. He doesn't have nearly the same amount of experience as Rubio.

5:23Anthony:Yeah. And on the Senate, he didn't actually do very well, did he? I mean, he got over the line, but he didn't do as well as he probably should have done in that in that Senate race. In other words, he does have some questions about his sort of political abilities. And obviously in the vice presidential race, well, he was on the Trump ticket. So he survived or failed by Trump. And Rubio, my goodness, you mentioned he ran in 2016. He got pummeled in 2016, didn't he, by one Donald J. Trump. And I think at the time I certainly felt, whoa, that's the end of it for Rubio. He's incredibly resilient, isn't he?

6:01Anthony:And you do wonder if actually he's a bit more resilient than J.D. Vance. He's a slightly softer character, slightly more amiable, perhaps in persona. But actually, he might be a bit tougher. Yeah, you know, that press conference was really interesting, not just for that little snippet, but for the way he handled the questions from the White House press corps. He joked, he was friendly, he wasn't really confrontational. It was definitely a contrast to Caroline Levitt and also to J.D. Vance, who always kind of picks a fight with the press when he's there. Or the same with Pete Hegseth when he's holding his press conferences at the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense.

6:41Rubio is a different sort of political animal, but he has skills. That 2016 campaign, yeah, it kind of went off the rails. You have to remember going into it, he was considered kind of a dark horse favorite, Someone who could appeal to Hispanic voters, who would kind of straddle the line between the conservative grassroots folks and the Republican establishment. And then, of course, Donald Trump came in and blew it all up. And and there was that famous debate in New Hampshire where Rubio just got got knifed in the back by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who said he was robotic and planned.

7:20And then Rubio proceeded to say things that were very robotic and pre-planned. And it tanked his campaign. He has recovered from that. He has been a survivor. And he's been one of the few people, I think, who has really done a good job of pivoting from establishment pre-Donald Trump darling to someone who folks in Donald Trump's orbit, maybe they don't fully trust, but they seem to be warming to.

7:45Anthony:Yeah. J.D. Vance, meanwhile, is in a difficult spot, isn't it? Because it's pretty obvious he doesn't really approve of the Iran war and he needs to make people aware of that. But at the same time, he needs to be loyal to the president that he's serving under, et cetera, et cetera. And what that does to his, you know, ultimately, one would assume that he would be the anointed one, although we might talk in a minute about who Trump might anoint, which was part of that very good question, wasn't it? But if if if he has assumed that he's been in that position, then the recent events are not doing him any favors, are they?

8:21Anthony:For the same for the thing we've talked about before, that is in the Kamala Harris positions. You're very tightly aligned with someone who might be going downhill politically. Yeah. The best thing that J.D. Vance has going for him is that he's Donald Trump's vice president. That does kind of position him as the heir apparent once Donald Trump exits from the scene. And there's some perks with being vice president. We saw that with Kamala Harris. You can travel around the country. You can network. You can form links to the kind of local political figures that are necessary in order to run a national campaign.

8:54You can develop a national fundraising network. You know, we heard that clip of him. That was part of a three state swing that included Oklahoma, but also included Iowa, which is, as you know, a key early battleground in the presidential election nomination contest. Iowa caucuses, at least for Republicans, still help set the playing field. It's the first time voters have a chance to weigh in on on who the presidential nominee is going to be. So he has that ability to set that groundwork. I think he clearly has presidential ambitions. But the downside, as you point out, is that if Donald Trump really goes down in flames, if this Iran war drags on, he becomes very unpopular, stays unpopular, and the Trump brand is damaged going into the 2028 nomination cycle, Vance will be in a difficult spot.

9:48And, you know, for that matter, Rubio could be at a difficult spot, too. He's not immune from being tainted by the Iran war and being associated with Donald Trump if things really get get ugly in the next couple of years.

10:00Anthony:And the other part of the question about them both being Catholics. Interesting that, isn't it? And in a still largely Protestant country. I mean, there is this strand, isn't there, on the broader American right where Catholicism is very much part of what is absolutely in fashion, if I put it like that. They're not out of the mainstream of right wing thinking, which is enormously associated with the Catholic Church, although it's worth saying not necessarily with this particular pope. But in the wider in the wider nation, does it does it matter one way or the other, do you think, when it comes to either of them being the actual candidate?

10:44I think you're right. I think within the Republican Party circles, being a conservative Catholic, I think that helps. I think there are a lot of more prominent Republican politicians who were either born Catholic or converted like J.D. Vance did because they feel that Catholicism, at least in the United States, is inherently conservative. They like the traditions, the norms, the institutions of the Catholic Church compared to some Protestant churches, which have been moving more progressively, although not the evangelical church that still is a big bedrock of the Republican Party. But conservative Catholicism has been gaining more prominence among politicians, but also among the U.S.

11:29Supreme Court. It is noteworthy, I think. It's not determinative, but it will be an interesting dynamic in that Republican presidential campaign.

11:39Anthony:Yeah. Is there a single WASP on the court, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant? You know, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants used to dominate the U.S. Supreme Court, but not anymore, really. I guess the closest you could say is Neil Gorsuch, who is an Episcopalian, but he was born Catholic. Justin, there are six Catholics currently on the Supreme Court out of the nine. That's John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, who was raised Catholic, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Elena Kagan is Jewish and Ketan J. Brown Jackson is Protestant. So, yeah, it is a Catholic dominated Supreme Court.

12:17Anthony:What about other people? Because that was also part of the question, wasn't it? The idea that it's not necessarily those two, which, of course, again, And we've discussed a little bit in the past. We're obviously going to turn to it much more in the future. But the questioner rightly saying we concentrate on quite a range of Democrats. We've only really talked about those two on the Republican side. And there could well be others. Indeed, actually, we've had a question from Hugh in Cheshire saying could figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene be well positioned as a vice presidential candidate?

12:49Anthony:She may be able to bridge the gap between diehard MAGA supporters and more moderate Republicans. She was, of course, who was a great Trump supporter, then fell out of it and has now left Congress, is very virulently opposed to him and he is very virulently opposed to her. I mean, there will be other people, won't there? There will be, especially as we've said, if Donald Trump does not have the kind of influence that he has had in the Republican Party come just over a year and a half from now when this really gets going. you could see an outsider come in and lay claim to real Trumpism, real MAGA, independent of Donald Trump.

13:27Obviously, a lot can happen between now and then. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene, because she has had such a visible break with Donald Trump, Donald Trump would have to be in political ruins for her to have the ability to step in at this point and lay claim to that mantle. You know, I hear Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator's name, come up a lot. Obviously, he's had some disagreements with Donald Trump, but they always seem to put it behind them in the end. He would be an interesting kind of an outsider candidate to swoop in. Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, also someone who has kind of an independent brand of conservatism and has stood up to Donald Trump but hasn't been the direct target of his ire.

14:11You could see there's going to be a bunch of different senators running. Ted Cruz, he ran in 2016. I think he wants to run again. And then maybe there's someone totally out of left field, someone we're not expecting, because, you know, come to think of it, Donald Trump surprised everyone in 2015. And they seem to the Republican base seems to like outsiders, anti-establishment candidates these days. Maybe Donald Trump Jr., maybe someone else. It is it is an open field. I think even if you look at polling right now, shows that J.D. Vance has widespread support, 40 percent in opinion polls for among Republicans for who the nominee should be.

14:49Rubio falls down around the 20 percent range. And then you have a lot of people in single digits.

14:54Anthony:Yeah. I mean, that's really interesting about Donald Trump Jr., isn't it? So if it's him, we assume daddy supports him and the family and all the money goes goes with him. There is really only room for one other lane, I would have thought, isn't there? And if you divide it into lanes where someone can run as the sort of coherent candidate that believes this set of principles are the future for the Republican Party. Then you've got the Trumpian lane, which is the family lane. Have you then got, I would have thought that assists Brian Kemp in a funny kind of way, or someone who is outside who could then say, no, that's not the future.

15:32Anthony:We've got to turn away from it. Yeah, there could be a non-Trump lane in 2028, a non-Trump tied lane. And that really does depend on the way things go in this country in the next year or so. But I think the one thing we could take from all of this is that Republicans will continue to look for someone who embodies Trumpism, if not Trump himself. They like the anti-establishment candidate. They like what Donald Trump has done to take it to institutions and elites in this country. And I don't think that is going away. I don't think what we're going to see is a return to the Mitt Romney, George W.

16:13Bush strain of republicanism. You know, that I think that is dead and buried at this point.

16:18Anthony:Just a final thought on this before we get to other questions, Anthony. The other thing that Rubio did at that press conference, I mean, it in a sense is not impressive because it's language that he knows but he he gave one answer didn't he or part of one answer in spanish and i did wonder when he was doing that that's if there's one constituency of people who were incredibly positive about trump last time round probably made the difference in a way to him winning but have gone very very cold on him in the period since they took him over the edge last time around And it's Hispanics and people who naturally and not necessarily would conduct their daily lives in Spanish, but they're certainly approachable in Spanish.

17:03Anthony:And it's interesting that he, of course, was just reminding us that that's a language he can converse in. Yeah, that struck me as well. It was a Spanish language reporter who asked a question, English and Spanish, and then asked Rubio to respond. And he said he would do it in both. And he did. He speaks Spanish fluently. And that could be a secret weapon that Rubio has that he could use in a general election. It could help him in the primaries as well. Obviously, his base is Florida, and Florida could be a key primary state. But being able to connect and activate Hispanic voters, Spanish-speaking voters in a general election in 2028 after Donald Trump won them over, as you mentioned, a pivotal voting bloc in 2024, and then has lost them because of economic and immigration issues this time around.

17:53Republicans, if they're smart, if Republican voters, if they're smart, may be looking for someone who can capitalize on that and reconnect in a way that maybe J.D. Vance, who is an immigration hardliner, can't. Yeah.

18:07Anthony:Let's turn to the Supreme Court decision in Virginia. So this is not the Supreme Court, the federal Supreme Court. This is the Virginia Supreme Court who have made a decision that I'm not sure we necessarily saw coming. And it's very bad news potentially for the Democrats, isn't it? And I'm going to defer to you, Anthony, to explain what it was that was happening and what it is that they've said. Well, so what the Virginia State Supreme Court did was essentially throw out the new maps that Virginia Democrats had drawn, giving their party a distinct advantage in the House delegation in Virginia.

18:39Right now, the Virginia delegation is six Democrats and five Republicans. These new maps would have made it likely in November that 10 Democrats would win and only one Republican. All of this was done in response to a redistricting push that started in Texas with them redrawing their maps and giving Republicans an advantage there. Missouri had done it. Of course, we talked about California, the Democrats there redrawing their maps to give Democrats more of an advantage. So Democrats did this in Virginia. They thought they had essentially fought Republicans to a draw for this redistricting battle, which would determine who controls the House of Representatives in November.

19:17And the Virginia State Supreme Court, by a narrow four to three majority, said, no way. They threw it all out on a procedural issue. And so now we're back to Democrats probably only picking up maybe one or two seats here in Virginia if they have a good election and not the four that they were counting on.

19:36Anthony:But what difference does that make nationally then, Anthony are we saying now that they're I don't know less likely to take the house what because you mentioned California they still got the California ones in the bag haven't they and the Republicans have got the Texas ones in the bag how does it balance out it did look like with Virginia it was going to be a bit of a push but a lot has changed in the last two weeks and it wasn't just this decision in Virginia which essentially wiped out a possible four seat gain for Democrats. But Florida since then has done their own line drawing, which could give Republicans another three or four seats.

20:13And then there was a Supreme Court decision just last week, changing their interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, allowing a bunch of southern states conceivably to redraw their lines in order to carve out what had been majority black districts that were favoring Democrats and now make them all majority Republican districts. So Tennessee has already done it. That's one Democratic district around Memphis that is going to now be Republican. Louisiana, which was the center of the Supreme Court case, they're pushing to possibly erase two Democratic seats there. You could see South Carolina also do it.

20:49That's one seat there. Maybe Alabama, another one. So all in all, at this point, you could see Republicans maybe net nine or ten seats that they didn't have in the previous congressional elections now swing to them. Now, nine or ten seats when Republicans have a two-seat majority right now, that could be a big shift. If Democrats do well and this is a wave election, none of that will matter. But if it's close, like it has been in the past, this could be the difference between Democrats taking control of the chamber and stopping Donald Trump's legislative agenda and ramping up oversight, maybe even having impeachment proceedings, or Republicans keeping control of the chamber and continuing to help Donald Trump, help protect Donald Trump and help enact his legislation.

21:37Anthony:Yeah, so on the subject of that second of these two decisions, so separate decisions, you've got the Virginia State Supreme Court and you've also got, you've just been telling us about, the Supreme Court, the actual Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act. And we've had an interesting question about that. Hi, this is Claire. I'm a longtime listener to the show and I've lived in Chicago for the past 12 years. I was hoping you could explain what impact the recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act could mean for redistricting efforts and how it might change the course of the midterms.