Marco Rubio cements his position as Trump’s trusted point man on foreign policy

How times have changed since Donald Trump nicknamed Marco Rubio “Little Marco” during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries. Today, now as president, Trump boasts that when he faces a challenge, he simply calls his Secretary of State: “He gets it solved.”

Rubio, for his part, has adopted Trumpist positions wholeheartedly. Just this past Friday, he took to social media to criticize Germany for designating the political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a far-right extremist group. And now, in a further sign of Trump’s trust in him, Rubio has been provisionally appointed to lead the National Security Council (NSC) — the White House body that oversees U.S. diplomacy, defense, and intelligence.

Rubio, the first Latino to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, is quickly amassing an impressive list of titles. In addition to heading the State Department, he now oversees the dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Archives, and, following the departure of Mike Waltz, the National Security Council.

It is only the second time in U.S. history that one person has held both the roles of secretary of state and national security adviser. And the precedent is far from reassuring. In 1973, amid the mounting Watergate scandal, president Richard Nixon found himself in urgent need of a new Secretary of State following the resignation of William Rogers. With his political capital depleted and Congress closing in, Nixon couldn’t afford a Senate confirmation battle. His solution: nominate his renowned National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger — a choice lawmakers felt compelled to accept. But the two-year dual-role experiment proved disastrous. Each position demands full-time focus, and in the midst of the Vietnam War, not even the master diplomat could handle both.

Rubio, 54, the son of Cuban immigrants, has taken on the national security adviser role on a temporary basis, but according to Politico, the White House intends to make the appointment permanent. The move came so abruptly that even Rubio’s spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, was caught off guard. The former Fox News anchor was in the middle of a press conference at the State Department when a reporter broke the news. “It is clear that I just heard this from you,” she told the journalist. “[It’s] an exciting moment here [...] As I think you all know, [Rubio] has worn several hats from day one.”

The fact that Rubio holds these positions — and that he is expanding their powers, even if only temporarily — highlights the trust Trump places in him today. The president prefers to surround himself with a relatively small circle of advisers, and it’s not uncommon for those he trusts most to be assigned an ever-growing number of responsibilities. Still, the final word always belongs to Trump — and his is the only one that counts.

Real estate developer Steve Witkoff, a friend of Trump’s with no prior diplomatic experience, has been steadily expanding his role since January as special envoy for sensitive negotiations. Initially focused solely on the war in Gaza, he has now added talks with Russia and Iran to his portfolio. Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for political affairs and the architect of the administration’s current immigration policy, is rumored to be a likely candidate to permanently take over as national security adviser should Rubio leave the post.

Unlike Stephen Miller — who was already one of Trump’s top advisers during his first term — Rubio was not initially part of the inner sanctum of the White House. In the early days of the new administration, the president even joked that he had to be cautious with his Secretary of State because he enjoyed support from Democrats.

There was some truth behind the joke. The most pro-Trump circles hadn’t fully warmed to the former senator — a traditional-style politician, who had once supported aid to Ukraine and foreign intervention. And who had been a primary rival to Trump.

Rubio’s first weeks in office reinforced a certain image of him as a second fiddle. He was on a tour of Latin America when he learned that Trump had declared the United States would take charge of Gaza to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Nor did he know in advance — before attending the Munich Security Conference in February — that a couple of days earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would shut the door on Ukraine’s entry into NATO in a speech in Brussels. Or that Vice President J.D. Vance, also in Munich, would all but demand that Europeans listen to their far-right parties.

But that same tour of Latin America began to earn him points with Trump and his inner circle, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. His talks in El Salvador with Nayib Bukele opened the door for the Salvadoran president to agree to hold third-country migrants deported from the United States in his country’s prisons — a move Trump sees as a major success and a cornerstone of his mass deportation policy.

The former senator and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has also taken great care to cultivate relationships with those right-wing circles that initially viewed him with suspicion. It was no coincidence that on the night of the traditional White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, on April 26, he was spotted at the gathering organized by far-right ideologue Steve Bannon at Butterworth’s, the favorite restaurant of Trump loyalists in Washington.

He has also significantly increased his appearances on the president’s favorite network, Fox News, and on new ultra-conservative media outlets — always lavishing praise on Trump and consistently repeating and defending the president’s positions, from Ukraine to immigration control, even when they contradict views he championed during his time as a senator.

On Friday, in a message on social media platform X, Rubio publicly criticized the decision by German intelligence services to classify the AfD party as a far-right extremist group — something that allows authorities to use intelligence tools to monitor the party’s activities. “That’s not democracy — it’s tyranny in disguise," posted Rubio. He wasn’t the first in Trump’s circle to side with the extremist group, which is also defended by figures such as Vice President J.D. Vance and tech oligarch Elon Musk.

On Wednesday, on the eve of his new appointment, Rubio once again lavished praise on Trump during a televised Cabinet meeting. “This president inherited 30 years of foreign policy that was built around what was good for the world,” he said. “Under President Trump, we’re making a foreign policy now that’s — was it good for America? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America safer? And does it make America richer?”

Rubio has thus chosen to remain as close as possible to Trump — even physically. Trump’s style of governance means that instead of reading long memos or sitting through lengthy briefings, he prefers to get up from the Oval Office and summon someone in person for a quick consultation. That conversation may well determine the president’s stance on an issue and become official policy.

Other national security advisers or secretaries of state spent their time in office on overseas tours, attending meetings or trying to defuse crises in global hotspots. Rubio leaves that role to Witkoff. He has opted to limit his travel to just a few days at most, staying in Washington as much as possible — often not even at the State Department, but inside the White House itself, where he uses an unoccupied office to make his calls as the nation’s top diplomat.

Even when it’s not planned: two weeks ago, he was scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte — and with Waltz, then still heading the NSC — in the executive floor of the State Department. Without prior notice, the meeting was moved to the West Wing of the presidential residence. To the surprise of White House reporters — who thought the day’s official schedule had ended — they were suddenly summoned to cover an unexpected statement by the head of the Atlantic Alliance. At that impromptu press conference, Rubio himself did not show up. The former “Little Marco” had stayed behind, working in the West Wing.

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