First, Rubio spent over a decade in the Senate, which is one of the world’s chummiest and most insular legislative bodies. And second, the former Florida senator had built a reputation as level-headed, reasonable, and compromise-minded—at least by the standards of the MAGA-era Republican Party. Senate Democrats no doubt were relieved to have Rubio running the State Department rather than, say, Steve Bannon.
One could argue that has been true. Yes, Rubio—who has since added the titles of acting national security advisor and acting national archivist to his portfolio—has had his share of foolish moments, like his recent order changing the State Department’s default communications font to Times New Roman because Calibri font was too woke. But for the most part, especially compared to colleagues like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (a murderous dimwit) or Attorney General Pam Bondi (just a dimwit, but a very big one), Rubio has run a tight ship. While Trump’s second term has been defined by gross overreach, incompetence, and chaos, the State Department has largely gone about its business without drawing controversy.
Less than a decade ago, Rubio saw Trump with clear eyes. Trump, he argued during his doomed campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, was a demagogue. “This is a political candidate … who has identified that there’s some really angry people in America,” Rubio said. “They feel as if they’ve been mistreated by the culture, by society, by our politics, by our economy… And along comes a presidential candidate and says to you, ‘You know why your life is hard? Because fill in the blank – somebody, someone, some country – they’re the reasons for it. Give me power so I can go after them.’”
In the desperate, final days of his 2016 campaign, Rubio likened Trump to a “third-world strongman.” He was right. A decade later, Trump is leading an increasingly authoritarian administration that is defined by fascistic shows of force, brazen and historic corruption, and a fierce determination to undo the American constitutional order and remake the federal government in his own image. But now, one of his most effective allies in that project is Rubio himself.
On both counts, it worked. Rubio not only ordered this crackdown, he eagerly and effusively defended it, claiming that it was a foreign policy necessity to remove students whose nonviolent activism he insisted was terroristic and fundamentally un-American. The students, Rubio said, had been given visas to study not to “become a social activist tearing up our campuses.” Never mind that the students whose visas he revoked had never been accused of violence or hate speech.
Despite his long record as not just a foreign policy hawk but as a particularly fierce critic of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Rubio has enthusiastically worked to advance Trump’s larger goal of ending the war in Ukraine on terms that are remarkably friendly to Russia. Though Putin started the conflict by invading Ukraine, Rubio has aped Trump, insisting it is “not our war” while blindly regurgitating Moscow’s blinkered description of it as a “proxy war” that Ukraine (and its NATO allies) was actually responsible for starting. Rubio has not only demanded Ukraine make concessions to the nation that invaded it, but repeatedly threatened to cut off aid if it does not. All the while, he has worked to cut it out of negotiations to end the war altogether, crafting settlements directly with Russia that are then foisted on the Ukrainians as a fait accompli. It is a “peace” that would double as a Russian victory, a settlement that would only make a future, more destructive conflict between Russia and the West more likely.
Hegseth will be take the lion’s share of blame if the U.S. ends up in a military quagmire in Venezuela, since he’s overseeing the military buildup in the southern Caribbean and illegally blowing up boats that he claims are drug traffickers tied to Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government. But make no mistake: Regime change in Venezuela is Rubio’s project. Rubio has reportedly spent months building the case for taking out Maduro, who has ruled the country since 2013, and only found success after he hit on a preposterous rationale that nevertheless convinced Trump: Venezuela is shipping huge quantities of drugs to the United States. (Never mind that Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl, and probably less than 10 percent of the cocaine in the U.S. passes through that country.)
It’s worth revisiting the old Rubio, from 2016. Has he really changed? Or was it foolish to ever believe he was a principled politician? Rubio has long desired political power beyond the Senate, and has tried to play the angles in Washington accordingly. The Rubio who called Trump a “third-world strongman” was making a bet that Trump would fail—and that, when he did, his fellow Republicans would turn to someone who had seen the light before they did. Someone like Marco Rubio. That turned out to be a terrible bet, as Trump is now ruling America very much like a strongman. Rubio is helping him because he’s making another bet: that voters will reward his work as one of that strongman’s most effective lieutenants. He was only ever ambitious, it turns out. He has no principles to betray—except one, which may end up getting a lot of people killed.
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