In a cabinet full of good picks, nobody’s stock has risen more in the first 100 days of the new Trump administration than Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
While the media has spent the early weeks of President Trump’s second term obsessing over palace intrigue and recycled, untrue caricatures of dysfunction, Rubio was quietly becoming the most important member of the President’s team.
‘Ultimately the core function of this job is to operationalize the president… to execute on the president’s policy directives across various agencies,’ Rubio told me in an exclusive interview.
Given all the hats Trump has assigned Rubio to wear (which include, in addition to his diplomatic duties, acting administrator of the US Agency for International Development, acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration and, most recently, interim National Security Advisor), it is clear the president thinks Rubio is meeting the moment.
Once a rival of Trump’s on the 2016 debate stage, the Rubio pick engendered some skepticism from the MAGA right. But on issue after issue — i.e. deporting illegal aliens and gang members, revoking the student visas of terrorist sympathizers, and reorienting the foreign aid industrial complex — Rubio has not only embraced President Trump’s ‘America First’ vision, but he has also articulated it and implemented as effectively as anyone.
‘What the president has returned to foreign policy is common sense… If it makes America stronger, safer, or more prosperous — we’re going to do it,’ Rubio said.
A refreshing aspect of Rubio’s leadership: he knows how to talk to the American people in plain English.
There’s no pablum or government-speak from Rubio. He simply lays flat the issue and articulates exactly what the president’s views are, such as his clear statements on the revocation of visas from foreign college students who are harassing Jewish students and stirring up pro-terrorist sentiments on campus.
Rubio’s blend of moral clarity, strategic focus, and communication savvy makes him not just the President’s best cabinet member – but one of the most important foreign policy leaders of the post-Cold War era.
Rubio wears multiple hats: Secretary of State, acting administrator of the US Agency for International Development, acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration and, most recently, interim National Security Advisor.
‘It is not in the national interest of the United States…to invite people onto our university campuses who are not just going to go there to study… but who are also going to go there to foment movements that support and excuse foreign terrorist organizations,’ Rubio said to podcaster Ben Shapiro.
‘No one is entitled to a visa. Let’s start with that, because I hear some of this reporting out there like if somehow … you’re allowed to have a visa unless we can come up with a reason why you shouldn’t have one. That’s not true. The burden of proof is the other way.’
Aside from the issues of the day, Rubio’s biggest mission is to ‘reorient’ the bureaucracy around a new foreign policy strategy that is solely focused on the national interest of the United States.
President Trump has entrusted Rubio with a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, a move that was decades overdue. For too long, Foggy Bottom functioned as a fortress of globalist inertia — an agency where career bureaucrats outlasted presidents and undermined elected political leaders.
Rubio, with Trump’s backing, is tearing down that edifice. Gone are the days when taxpayer dollars were spent on foreign aid boondoggles, climate lectures to developing nations, or embassy programming steeped in DEI jargon.
Rubio isn’t just managing Foggy Bottom — he’s draining the bureaucratic quicksand and turning the State Department into a command center for American strength. As he put it, the goal is to ‘move at the speed of relevance — a foreign policy that delivers, not theorizes.’
The new State Department will be aligned around national strength, American values, and accountability. And that includes moving the ‘soft power’ foreign aid functions formerly under the US Agency for International Development (USAID) directly under the control of the Secretary.
Often, Rubio said, USAID was working at cross purposes to the foreign policy goals of the presidential administration.
‘You would have the ambassador… pursuing one strategy… and then you have this independent agency… promoting programs that were considered hostile by the government that we were trying to get closer to,’ Rubio told me.
In a cabinet full of good picks, nobody’s stock has risen more in the first 100 days of the new Trump administration than Secretary of State Marco Rubio .
President Trump has entrusted Rubio with a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, a move that was decades overdue.
And that’s not to mention the waste and abuse of the foreign aid system by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that Rubio said were skimming millions off the top.
‘We were just funding things that were propping up the foreign aid industrial complex… where you had to spend $10 million just to get $1 million to the recipients,’ Rubio said. ‘Three and four layers of subcontractors all getting a piece of the pie without any metrics on what we were getting in return.’
As a political matter, that dog will hunt with the American people.
As Trump’s second term progresses, the world will continue to test America’s resolve. The Russia/Ukraine conflict has proved hard to solve; the Middle East remains volatile; and the migrant crisis mess left by the Biden administration will cause headaches for years.
But it’s increasingly clear that we have the right man at the helm of our diplomacy. Rubio’s blend of moral clarity, strategic focus, and communication savvy makes him not just the President’s best cabinet member — but one of the most important foreign policy leaders of the post-Cold War era.
