The thrill in Washington is rising: United States President-elect Donald Trump, reviews recommend, 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 thought for his hawkish method to US international coverage, would, if nominated and confirmed by the US Senate, be the primary Latino to function the nation’s high diplomat.
It could additionally mark a outstanding turnaround from the Republican Occasion presidential primaries in 2016 when the 2 males infamously traded churlish nicknames.
For the reason that public spat, consultants mentioned, Rubio seems to have tailored his views through the years on points such because the struggle in Ukraine and immigration insurance policies to fall in step 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 international coverage points.
The way it all started: ‘Little Marco’, ‘Small Hands 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 exhausting final night time. 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 understand why his [Trump’s] hands are the size of someone who is 5’2. … And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust 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 international coverage.
Rubio is extra of a standard interventionist who advocates for a muscular method to international conflicts whereas Trump’s international coverage has centered on avoiding navy interventions overseas.
This has, at occasions, moved Rubio to publicly criticise Trump’s international coverage, together with in 2019 when he accused the then-president of “abandoning” the US navy effort in Syria earlier than it was “completely finished”.
Nevertheless, in recent times, consultants mentioned, Rubio has softened his stance to fall in step with Trump.
“Rubio is a flexible 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 struggle 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 Individuals.
Throughout that interval, he labelled Russian President Vladimir Putin “a killer” and questioned his psychological well being.
I want I may 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 & important
It could be a mistake to imagine this Putin would react the identical means 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 mentioned he may finish the battle “in 24 hours”. He has steered Ukraine might need to cede territory to Russia to succeed in a peace deal.
It’s a stance that Rubio seems to have softened to, Musgrave mentioned, however with “a pragmatic, flexible and more appealing face” than Trump’s extra verbose rhetoric.
In latest interviews, Rubio has steered Ukraine wants to hunt “a negotiated settlement” with Russia, and he was one among 15 Republican senators to vote towards a navy support bundle for Ukraine that handed in April.
Rubio has said that, with Trump in energy, the US can anticipate a extra “pragmatic foreign policy”.
Are Trump and Rubio aligned of their help for Israel?
The 2 males initially clashed on the difficulty in 2016 with Rubio, a longstanding supporter of Israel, accusing Trump of being “anti-Israeli” and publishing a press release titled “Fact Check: Donald Trump Is No Ally to Israel.”
Rubio’s remarks had been in connection to Trump suggesting he would “be sort of a neutral guy” 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 struggle on Gaza and said 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 struggle on Gaza, telling an activist in 2023 that he didn’t help a ceasefire and Hamas was “100 percent to blame” for the deaths of Palestinians within the Gaza Strip.
He then supported Trump’s plan to deport international 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 Worldwide Courtroom of Justice for Israel to halt the offensive, citing “immense risk” to the Palestinian inhabitants. He in contrast the Israeli operation to the pursuit of Adolf Hitler throughout World Conflict II.
However in April, Rubio indicated that he had shifted away from unfettered help for international wars – which is extra in step with Trump’s method to international 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 mentioned that earlier in his profession, Rubio “was a force for trying to change the Republican Party to be more open to immigration, more open to diversity”.
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 harder stance on immigration, however it remained significantly softer than Trump’s hardline insurance policies in the direction of immigration. For instance, in 2016, Rubio said that mass deportations of thousands and thousands of undocumented migrants weren’t “a realistic policy”.
However now, Musgrave mentioned, Rubio has shifted to a extra “anti-immigrant, pro-legal immigrant stance that’s in keeping both with his political base and with President Trump’s policies”.
In latest months, nonetheless, Rubio has defended a few of Trump’s extra populist rhetoric, together with his feedback that immigrants had been “poisoning the blood of our country”.
“That’s a saying that he [Trump] uses, but it has nothing to do with race,” Rubio mentioned in a Spanish-language TV interview, including: “The country is threatened by this influx of people, which we now know even includes criminals and terrorists.”
