A day after Donald Trump said flatly that someone else will be president in two-and-a-half years, Vice President JD Vance reignited the 2028 embers Thursday with another turn at the White House briefing room podium, though he played coy about his own plans.

Vance sparred with reporters over the conflict with Iran, gas prices, data centers, November’s midterm elections and other pressing issues. He reiterated Trump’s midterms pitch that a vote for any Democrat this fall is one for higher taxes and energy prices — and he declined to say whether he would endorse John Thune to continue as Senate GOP leader next year despite touting their “good relationship.”

The former Ohio senator also used the high-profile setting to push Trump’s midterms homestretch message with House and Senate gavels up for grabs. Like his boss, Vance stressed what Trump views as his second administration’s biggest accomplishments.

“My elevator pitch is actually … very simple. Do you want to live in a country that has safety and security and prosperity? If the answer is yes, and I think most Americans do, then vote for congressional Republicans over congressional Democrats,” Vance said, with the first mail ballots set to go out in North Carolina on Friday. “On every single issue, the Democrats have taken the side of fraudsters, of criminals, and of far-left interest groups over the side of the American people.”

While the vice president delivered his pitch smoothly, there were a couple of bumpy moments.

He said he was honored to represent the White House in New York City next week at a ceremony to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The event is typically a solemn one at which politicians don’t speak, though they interact cordially. But Vance appeared to take a shot at former President Joe Biden as he forecast a potential meeting next Friday.

“I’m really looking forward to hanging out with Joe Biden. I’m sure that we’ll have many, many intense intellectual conversations, and, you know, it’ll be great,” he said.

And on the standoff with Iran, Vance told reporters, “I wouldn’t call it a war,” before acknowledging that there “have been places where this has flared up.”

Those were not the lone memorable moments from Vance’s turn as the first guest briefer at the brown-and-blue lectern since Karoline Leavitt stepped down as White House press secretary last week.

Thune theater

After Trump spent much of the summer slamming Thune over the GOP-crafted elections package known as the SAVE America Act, Vance was asked by CQ Roll Call whether he would endorse Thune to remain as the Senate Republican leader in the new Congress. Vance served with Thune during his two years as senator.

“It’s the business of Republican senators to determine who their next leader will be. I will say about John Thune: We have a very good relationship. He has a very good relationship with the president of the United States,” the vice president said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t disagree with people from time to time, or have a preference or a priority that’s going to be different from the Senate majority leader.”

“I suspect John Thune will run again. I suspect that he’ll get the support of a lot of his colleagues. But I would defer to those folks about who their next leader’s going to be,” he added.

Notably, Vance’s cautious response came one day after Thune broke with Trump over the president’s still-mysterious plan to import foreign-raised beef products and embrace of data centers during a television interview.

Midterms minefield

Vance walked through a political minefield Thursday as he was pressed about some of voters’ top midterm issues.

On data centers, he said the way to “bridge” voter concerns’ about the facilities triggering higher energy prices and pollution with the president’s push for more centers was for critics to start “following the president of the United States.”

“What was the most important thing that we’ve done on data centers? [Trump] came out and said we have to have ratepayer protection. If you’re going to build a data center, you have to feed power back into the grid, as opposed to taking power out,” Vance said.

And on gas prices, he refused to give a date by which he expects the pump pain to subside

“Gas, frankly, could have been much, much higher were it not for our efforts,” the vice president said, seeming to ignore that it was Trump’s late-February decision to join Israel in striking targets inside Iran that set off the higher energy prices. “But I’m not going to make a promise about when it’s going to return to $3.”

“What I will say is that we have to remember why are we doing this. No. 1, it’s so that Iran never has a nuclear weapon,” he said. “And No. 2, what we’re doing right now is protecting commercial shipping in order to ensure that we don’t have a worldwide energy crisis.”

He sharply criticized Iranian leaders for their attacks on commercial vessels traversing the Strait of Hormuz after saying they would cease such strikes.

2028 vibes

Vance again on Thursday declined to spell out his thoughts on the next presidential election, even as he continues to lead most 2028 GOP primary polls over Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Asked about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz publicly floating a 2028 White House run and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also reportedly mulling a bid, Vance demurred.

“That’s an innovative way to ask the question — but I’m still not going to take the bait,” he said with a laugh. He went on to say he was focused on the midterms and praised Cruz and Hegseth.

For now, the early polling picture shows a race mostly between Vance and Rubio. Vance’s support has crossed 40 percent in recent surveys, while Rubio is the only other potential GOP contender consistently hitting the 20 percent mark.

Trump in recent weeks had returned to floating his own possible bid for a legally questionable third term. But in the Oval Office on Wednesday, he seemed to suggest that someone else would be sitting behind the Resolute Desk come January 20, 2029.

“I hope you people remember when the next president comes in in two-and-a-half years [and is] going to say what a great job he or she did,” Trump told reporters with a grin, surrounded by Cabinet officials and invited travel industry executives.

“I did it.”