Let’s face it, Marco Rubio is a busy man — what with his jobs as Secretary of State, interim National Security Adviser, U.S. Archivist and Head of USAID.
And then there are the side hustles: Lauding Donald Trump — the guy he once called a “con man” — on Fox News and other TV appearances; sinking into the couch in the Oval Office when he’s embarrassed and humiliated; lying about judges’ roles and the Constitution; and trying to out-schmooze every other cabinet member when they go round the Trump Tribute Table, leaving you wondering, “Will they have anything left to say for Trump’s funeral?”
Former GOP advisor Rick Wilson, who once believed Rubio was the future of the GOP, believes differently now: “Everyone has things in their career of which they’re ashamed,” he tweeted. “Nothing … and I mean nothing … in my career in politics amkes me more ashamed and regretful than supporting and promoting Marco Rubio.
“He is the most craven betrayer of his stated ideals of any human I have met.”
Wilson believes he know why Rubio has sold his soul to Trump and MAGA.
“Marco wants to run for president again,“ Wilson told Public Notice. ”He still has this vision that he’s going to be president someday. He’s thinking, ‘I can do this for Trump, and I can win over these MAGA people, and I can snake through this thing.’ It’s incredibly sad. There were a lot of people who believed in Marco. I was certainly one of them.”
Curiously, as the Trump inner circle shrinks, Rubio has moved into the center of it. You’ll recall that, along with the con man remark, he also insisted that “for years to come, there are many people on the right, in the media and voters at large, that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump.”
And now Rubio has been “trapped” into working more jobs for Trump than the guy at Mar-a-Lago who was trying to unplug security cameras, drain the pool, flood a storage room and tamper with witnesses.
Along with Secretary of State, Rubio’s other official duties indicate … a) serious people don’t want to work in the Trump administration; and b) Trump has become so paranoid that only sycophants can work for him.
Who knew that only a few months after Trump railed on the campaign that Americans under Joe Biden had to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, a guy in Trump’s cabinet would face the same fate.
Which leads us to the one-liner:
“Of course Trump has the one Latino guy in his cabinet working four jobs,” former Kamala Harris staffer Armand Domalewski tweeted.
“Marco Rubio, unbelievable,” Trump said Thursday before announcing on social media that Michael Waltz would be nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and Rubio would take over as national security adviser in the interim. ”When I have a problem, I call up Marco, he gets it solved.”
Thomas Wright, an NSC official during the Biden administration who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the national security adviser post alone is “more than a full-time job.”
“It is just very hard to comprehend the idea that you can do this job sort of part time,” Wright said.
He said he watched national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy work 14-15 hour days, six to seven days a week: “I think they felt that they had to do that to do the job properly.”
In a recent interview on Fox News, Rubio joked that Trump couldn’t ask him to be pope because he’s married. True, but as pope it would be a heck of a lot easier for Rubio to have his confession heard.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.