The excitement in Washington is rising: United States President-elect Donald Trump, experiences counsel, is about to select Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state.
Rubio, who serves on the Senate Choose Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on International Relations and is understood for his hawkish method to US overseas coverage, would, if nominated and confirmed by the US Senate, be the primary Latino to function the nation’s prime diplomat.
It could additionally mark a outstanding turnaround from the Republican Social gathering presidential primaries in 2016 when the 2 males infamously traded churlish nicknames.
For the reason that public spat, specialists stated, Rubio seems to have tailored his views over time on points such because the conflict in Ukraine and immigration insurance policies to fall consistent with Trump’s stance.
Let’s have a look at how the Florida senator’s relationship with Trump has modified over time and what we all know of Rubio’s views on key overseas coverage points.
The way it all started: ‘Little Marco’, ‘Small Arms Trump’
The 2 males clashed after they got here up towards one another within the 2016 presidential primaries with Trump mocking Rubio for perspiring profusely and labelling him “Little Marco”.
Light-weight Marco Rubio was working laborious final evening. The issue is, he’s a choker, and as soon as a choker, all the time a choker! Mr. Meltdown.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 26, 2016
The remarks prompted Rubio to shoot again: “I don’t perceive why his [Trump’s] arms are the scale of somebody who’s 5’2. … And you recognize what they are saying about males with small arms? You may’t belief them.”
But belief him, he did. After Rubio was knocked out of the primaries, he finally backed Trump for president.
Do Trump and Rubio agree on Ukraine?
On paper, the 2 males have totally different approaches to US overseas coverage.
Rubio is extra of a standard interventionist who advocates for a muscular method to overseas conflicts whereas Trump’s overseas coverage has centered on avoiding army interventions overseas.
This has, at occasions, moved Rubio to publicly criticise Trump’s overseas coverage, together with in 2019 when he accused the then-president of “abandoning” the US army effort in Syria earlier than it was “fully completed”.
Nonetheless, lately, specialists stated, Rubio has softened his stance to fall consistent with Trump.
“Rubio is a versatile and pragmatic politician who has accommodated himself to the rise of President Trump,” Paul Musgrave, an affiliate professor of presidency at Georgetown College in Qatar, instructed Al Jazeera.
One such shift is Rubio’s method to the conflict in Ukraine.
Within the preliminary months after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Rubio took to social media to fervently rally help for Ukraine amongst People.
Throughout that interval, he labelled Russian President Vladimir Putin “a killer” and questioned his psychological well being.
I want I might share extra,however for now I can say it’s fairly apparent to many who one thing is off with #Putin
He has all the time been a killer,however his drawback now’s totally different & vital
It could be a mistake to imagine this Putin would react the identical manner he would have 5 years in the past
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 26, 2022
Trump, in distinction, has insisted that Putin would by no means have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had he been in workplace.
Trump, who will take workplace once more in January, has additionally stated he might finish the battle “in 24 hours”. He has urged Ukraine might have to cede territory to Russia to succeed in a peace deal.
It’s a stance that Rubio seems to have softened to, Musgrave stated, however with “a realistic, versatile and extra interesting face” than Trump’s extra verbose rhetoric.
In latest interviews, Rubio has urged Ukraine wants to hunt “a negotiated settlement” with Russia, and he was one in every of 15 Republican senators to vote towards a army assist bundle for Ukraine that handed in April.
Rubio has acknowledged that, with Trump in energy, the US can count on a extra “pragmatic overseas coverage”.
Are Trump and Rubio aligned of their help for Israel?
The 2 males initially clashed on the problem in 2016 with Rubio, a longstanding supporter of Israel, accusing Trump of being “anti-Israeli” and publishing a press release titled “Reality Test: Donald Trump Is No Ally to Israel.”
Rubio’s remarks had been in connection to Trump suggesting he would “be kind of a impartial man” within the Palestine-Israel battle.
In his first time period in workplace, Trump dispelled any query over neutrality after he formally recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
He has since accused President Joe Biden, who beat him within the 2020 election, of restraining Israel in its conflict on Gaza and acknowledged throughout a debate with Biden in June that he’ll assist Israel to “finish the job” if re-elected.
Rubio has had a sometimes hawkish stance on Israel’s conflict on Gaza, telling an activist in 2023 that he didn’t help a ceasefire and Hamas was “one hundred pc guilty” for the deaths of Palestinians within the Gaza Strip.
He then supported Trump’s plan to deport overseas pro-Palestinian pupil demonstrators to get them to “behave”.
Nader Hashemi, affiliate professor of Center East and Islamic politics at Georgetown College, instructed Al Jazeera that Rubio’s previous feedback on the battle, particularly when referencing Palestinians, can at occasions be “indistinguishable from [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu”.
Rubio has beforehand defended Israel’s proper to conduct a floor operation in Rafah regardless of an emergency ruling by the International Court of Justice for Israel to halt the offensive, citing “immense threat” to the Palestinian inhabitants. He in contrast the Israeli operation to the pursuit of Adolf Hitler throughout World Battle II.
However in April, Rubio indicated that he had shifted away from unfettered help for overseas wars – which is extra consistent with Trump’s method to overseas coverage – when he voted towards a bundle that offered emergency funding to Israel, arguing that the deal ought to have additionally included cash for US border enforcement.
Has Rubio modified his views on immigration to align with Trump’s?
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, seems to have shifted to a extra populist method on immigration.
Musgrave stated that earlier in his profession, Rubio “was a drive for attempting to alter the Republican Social gathering to be extra open to immigration, extra open to variety”.
As a member of the Florida Home of Representatives in 2003, Rubio had co-sponsored a model of the DREAM Act, which might have allowed undocumented immigrant college students to obtain everlasting residency in the event that they met sure standards.
When Rubio turned speaker of the Florida Home in 2006, he stalled immigration reforms that may have cracked down on undocumented migrants.
After being elected a US senator in 2010, he started to take a more durable stance on immigration, however it remained significantly softer than Trump’s hardline insurance policies in direction of immigration. For instance, in 2016, Rubio acknowledged that mass deportations of thousands and thousands of undocumented migrants weren’t “a practical coverage”.
However now, Musgrave stated, Rubio has shifted to a extra “anti-immigrant, pro-legal immigrant stance that’s in preserving each together with his political base and with President Trump’s insurance policies”.
In latest months, nevertheless, Rubio has defended a few of Trump’s extra populist rhetoric, together with his feedback that immigrants had been “poisoning the blood of our nation”.
“That’s a saying that he [Trump] makes use of, however it has nothing to do with race,” Rubio stated in a Spanish-language TV interview, including: “The nation is threatened by this inflow of individuals, which we now know even consists of criminals and terrorists.”
