Trey Gowdy said Marco Rubio was the Republican winner of the night after Democrats won control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. The comment pushed Rubio into the center of a fresh round of Republican talk about the 2028 Republican nomination.
Gowdy on
“There’s one winner tonight on the Republican side, and that is Marco Rubio,” Gowdy said on early Wednesday. His remark came as Republican strategists started sorting through the GOP’s losses and asking who from Donald Trump’s camp could still build a viable path in 2028.
Some Republicans view Rubio as one of the few members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet who could avoid blame for the midterm losses. That reading gives him a cleaner lane than other names being discussed, even as the election left the House and Senate in Democratic hands.
Trump Cabinet Names
Ron DeSantis has hinted that he is open to running again, and Ted Cruz said in August that it was “no secret” he wanted to be president. Inside Donald Trump’s administration, the discussion has centered on Rubio and JD Vance, with both already part of the broader 2028 conversation.
Rubio’s position is complicated by the Iran war. JD Vance said after the midterms, “The reason we lost is the war,” and added, “Any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.” Vance had privately opposed the war from the start and later led U.S. negotiations to end it, while Rubio had been hawkish on Iran as a senator.
Rubio has so far avoided stepping too far out front as the face of Donald Trump’s Iran war. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Pete Hegseth have done much of the public messaging, leaving Rubio in a quieter role even as he served as Trump’s national security adviser and chief diplomat.
Rubio and the 2028 race
Asked whether he would seek the Republican nomination, Rubio said he was focused on his current national security roles and had no plans to run. A person close to him said he had left the door open but remained focused on those duties, which leaves his next move as a choice, not a declaration.
That is why Rubio is being cast as a winner even while he says he is not running: his standing improved in a night that damaged other Republican names, and the post-midterm debate now turns on whether he stays in his current lane or steps into the 2028 Republican nomination fight. Exit polls showed 63% of voters said going to war with Iran was a mistake, two-thirds said Donald Trump’s policies had worsened the economy, and 61% said Trump was more focused on his own interests than the country’s.
