For Rubio, taking down the regimes in Venezuela and Cuba has long been seen as a way of ascending to the White House.Illustration by AJ Dungo; Source photograph by Andrew Harnik / Getty
Marco Rubio has developed a two-step routine in service of Donald Trump, Dexter Filkins observes in a timely and penetrating Profile in this week’s issue. Step one: praise the boss, effusively, as a hero. (A sample post from Rubio’s X account: “Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before.”) Step two: explain that whatever unprecedented thing the President has just done—capturing the head of state of another country in the middle of the night, promising to take control of Greenland—is, in fact, entirely normal.
Rubio’s dual titles of Secretary of State and national-security adviser, as Filkins points out, would make him the most powerful American diplomat since Henry Kissinger. And yet, by comparison, Rubio seems less like a foreign-policy adviser and more “like a support staffer for the President,” Filkins writes. “Ultimately, he has to be a hundred per cent loyal to the President, and when the President zigs and zags Rubio has to zig and zag, too,” one former Western diplomat who’s worked with Rubio said. “He’s had to swallow a lot of shit.” Rubio has alienated many in the foreign-policy world. As one retired ambassador told Filkins, “Trashing our allies, gutting State and foreign aid, the tariffs—the damage is going to take years to repair, if it can ever be repaired. I hope it ruins his career.”
Filkins traces Rubio’s origins, his early days in the Florida state House, his failed 2016 Presidential campaign, and, now, his present position at the side of a former rival who mocked him as “Little Marco.” The resulting portrait is of a man who is ideologically malleable, always ready to execute on the President’s most draconian impulses. Last year, Rubio oversaw the gutting of U.S.A.I.D.—just years after he lobbied the Biden Administration to increase the agency’s budget. As one political figure in Miami put it to Filkins, “The one constant in Marco Rubio’s career is that he has betrayed every mentor and every principle he’s ever had in order to claim power for himself.”
Filkins’s Profile of the Secretary of State is filled with remarkable observations from those who worked with Rubio in the past and who work with him now in the White House. At a moment when Trump has abandoned the America First ideology of his first term and ordered military operations in Venezuela, Iran, and Syria, and has threatened Canada, Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, and the future of the NATO alliance, Rubio is his most critical aide––and a potential successor.
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Photograph by Al Drago / Bloomberg / Getty
The Supreme Court Gets Back to Work
The Justices are heading into a busy, contentious season, after a bit of a lull over the holidays. Trump will factor heavily in quite a few of the big cases—including ones concerning birthright citizenship, the firing of a Federal Reserve governor, and transgender athletes. “Many of the upcoming cases are bound to reflect not only the country’s divisions but its anger,” Amy Davidson Sorkin writes. “They will also reveal just how willing the Court, with its conservative super-majority, is to stand up to the President.” Read the story »
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