Billionaire Ken Griffin backs Rubio over Vance in 2028 GOP primary

Summary

Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire who poured more than $100 million into Republican campaigns during the 2024 election cycle, has already picked his horse for 2028. At a private conference on Wednesday, Griffin said he would back Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vice President JD Vance if both men enter the GOP presidential primary. The declaration is notable less for who Griffin chose than for the fact that he chose at all: Donald Trump has been in office for mere months, and the shadow primary is already producing public commitments from the party's biggest financial players. Griffin's preference matters because donors of his scale don't just write checks; they recruit staff, anchor fundraising networks, and signal to other wealthy Republicans where the serious money will go. The move reflects a broader scramble among well-known Republicans to identify whether there is a viable lane for a nominee outside Trump's direct orbit in 2028. Rubio and Vance represent meaningfully different visions of what Trumpism looks like without Trump: one a foreign-policy institutionalist who has made peace with the movement, the other a true-believer ideologue who has made himself its heir apparent. The race, formally, does not exist yet. Informally, it is already underway.