
Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden, looked out at the crowd and openly tested the political market value of two men now circling the centre of Republican succession politics. Then he made sure nobody mistook it for an endorsement.
The US president used a National Police Week dinner on Monday night to publicly pit Vice President JD Vance against Secretary of State Marco Rubio in what amounted to an impromptu applause contest, asking guests which of the two they preferred as the future face of the Republican Party.