Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance have become each other’s primary sounding boards in the West Wing as the pair work together to help shape and execute President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, according to five people close to the two top officials.
Rubio — the nation’s top diplomat and Trump’s national security adviser — spends most of his time not at the State Department but inside the White House, where he makes use of the NSA office, according to a person close to the secretary, granted anonymity to discuss his schedule.
From that perch, he and the vice president regularly meet, often with few others present, to discuss what has become an expansive foreign policy agenda. Their offices are “literally feet apart,” said a person familiar with the situation, noting that the corner of the West Wing has the offices of Rubio, Vance and chief of staff Susie Wiles.
“Marco, with years and years more experience, kindly helps JD — as he does all of us,” the person added.
Rubio and Vance coordinated on the Israel-Hamas peace effort and their joint visit to the Vatican. The two “worked closely during Iran and just about any high profile policy process,” said a person close to the White House, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss their relationship.
“I think it’s probably safe to assume they talk every day,” said a White House staffer.
The face-to-face meetings offer a way for Vance and Rubio — who have not always been aligned on foreign-policy — to have candid conversations. And they have the added benefit of tamping down on leaks to the press, said the person close to Rubio.
Their working relationship, always closely examined, is newly under the microscope this week after Trump again intimated that Vance and Rubio are his two most-likely successors.
“I’m not sure anyone would run against those two,” Trump said.
Rubio and Vance have downplayed any inherent tension that would seem impossible to avoid, with Vance insisting on a recent podcast that Rubio is his “best friend”
“President Trump has incredible confidence in Marco Rubio who dutifully supports the president’s vision and works tirelessly to accomplish our foreign policy goals,” Vance said in a statement to POLITICO. “Marco is reliable, incredibly competent and a true asset to the Administration.”
Rubio, who was not made available for this story, also sees Vance as his top confidant, the source close to the secretary said.
Their policy discussions are often joined by Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, who hosts them in her office ahead of key discussions with the president.
“There’s a natural alignment, right? You have the vice president, obviously, and the White House chief of staff, and then the secretary, who’s national security adviser. And a lot of the biggest challenges the administration faces right now are these very thorny, complex foreign policy problems that we inherited, and that is a group of people who implicitly trust each other,” the source close to Rubio said of the West Wing trio.
The Vance-Rubio relationship dates back to their days in the Senate, when the two worked on bills together, including The William S. Knudsen Defense Remobilization Act that called for a national strategy to revitalize defense production.
Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who came into the Senate with Vance in 2023, told POLITICO that Vance and Rubio relate to each other’s humble beginnings and shared sense of humor.
“When you have lunch together every day, you tend to gravitate to people that are like you,” he said. “So we were often at the same tables and had a lot of, you know, similar ages, a lot of the same cultural references — but I think they’re just both good guys who are in it for the right reasons, and are pretty aligned on a lot of issues.”
He said the two also have a shared sense of humor: “Rubio knows a lot of movie lines, and JD just has really good timing,” he said.
Schmitt pointed out that they were all questioning additional funding for Ukraine when they were in the Senate, and had raised concerns that it wouldn’t align with America-first principles.
“There was money for Ukraine and and I think many of us were on the floor, into the late night, including myself, Rubio, and Vance, talking about, ‘Hey, there’s all this discussion about the sovereignty of other people’s borders. What about ours? And what about the people affected in our communities? That’s just kind of one example of where that alignment was, and they both brought very effective voices to the debate,” he said.
