Marco Rubio
Announced as Nominee for Secretary of State
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is a Trump loyalist and was a top contender to be Trump’s VP candidate in 2024. Rubio refused to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 elections if Trump had lost and has repeated disproven claims about the 2020 election. He has also claimed that “every major news outlet in America in 2020 censored the Biden laptop story.”
Rubio has consistently defended Trump against investigations and impeachment efforts. Following January 6th, Rubio initially condemned the attack as unpatriotic and “3rd world-style anti-American anarchy,” but he later voted to acquit Trump for his role in inciting the mob to storm the Capitol and trying to subvert the election. He also voted against creating a January 6 commission.
He has embraced Trump’s attacks on undocumented immigrants and has endorsed roundups, asserting “unfortunately, we’re going to have to do something dramatic to remove people from this country that are here illegally, especially people we know nothing about, but 10 million, 11 million that was the number 15 years ago. Today, it’s upwards of 25 to 30 million, maybe more.”
Rubio is a climate change denier who has stated “I don’t agree with the notion … that somehow, there are actions that we can take today that would actually have an impact on our climate…our climate is always changing.” When asked to clarify his views, Rubio asserted: “I by no means am going to go out and tell people that if we do these things that they’re proposing, by changing [energy] laws and the way we conduct our energy policy, that it would have any measurable impact on our weather because it’s not accurate to say that.”
Among Rubio’s largest and first supporters, is Jose “Pepe” Fanjul, whose company Florida Crystals allegedly continues burning sugar crops and producing polluting, poisonous “black snow” across low-income, black and brown communities west of West Palm Beach, according to reporting by ProPublica. Rubio has also received over $138,000 from the PAC and employees of private prison operator, GEO Group, which a faces a lawsuit for human trafficking for allegedly paying its inmates just $1 per day for labor in its prisons.
Born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, Rubio tells his family’s story as a central part of his political narrative. He has described himself as the “son of exiles,” implying that his parents were forced to flee Cuba after Fidel Castro’s rise to power. However, a closer examination of official documents, including naturalization papers, shows that his parents arrived in the United States more than two-and-a-half years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government on New Year’s Day 1959. In response to such questioning Rubio said, “The real essence of my family’s story is not about the date my parents first entered the United States. Or whether they traveled back and forth between the two nations.”
He worked at the Miami law firm Becker & Poliakoff from 2001 to 2004 and has taught at Florida International University. His political career began in the Florida House of Representatives, where he was Speaker from 2006 to 2008. He then pursued a seat in the U.S. Senate, successfully campaigning as a Tea Party supporter in 2010. As of 2022, Senator Rubio had among the worst voting attendance records, missing 9% of Senate votes.
WHAT PROJECT 2025 SAYS ABOUT DISMANTLING AMERICA’S GLOBAL STANDING AND ABANDONING OUR ALLIES
THE POLICIES
– Retreat from global alliances, frameworks, and treaties that have protected the post-World War II world order.
– Pressure European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to reduce their reliance on U.S. support for defending against threats including Russian aggression.
– Upend the post-WWII world order by abandoning U.S. commitments to allies and partners, destabilizing diplomatic channels with allies and adversaries alike, and withdrawing from international organizations and multilateral systems, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, among others.
– Consolidate and reduce U.S. foreign assistance and condition all remaining foreign assistance on clearly and unambiguously supporting the Administration’s agenda, including anti-abortion policies.
PRECEDING CONTEXT FOR PROJECT 2025
– Trump diminished America’s leverage, reputation, and its global leadership role, weakened regional security, and hindered global progress on shared challenges, including climate change, global health, and economic security.
– Trump undermined U.S. military alliances, threatened U.S. withdrawal from NATO, pulled U.S. troops from Germany, emboldened Russia, and sided with Russian claims on election interference over the FBI’s intelligence.
– Trump destabilized U.S.-China relations across diplomatic, economic, and military lines, including via inflammatory rhetoric against China, pushing COVID conspiracies, and an escalating trade war.
– Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State, created and led the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which claims that there is no international right to abortion. A group of 32 governments, primarily illiberal and authoritarian, co-signed the declaration.
HOW ARE PROJECT 2025’S POLICIES POSSIBLE?
– The Constitution grants the President broad authority to control U.S. foreign policy in addition to operational control of the U.S. military as Commander-in-Chief.
– Senate approval is required for entering treaties, but Presidents have unilaterally terminated treaties without a super-majority vote, even though the Supreme Court has not ruled that the President has such authority.