President Trump and Marco Rubio were once political enemies. Now, Rubio is Secretary of State, head of the National Security Council, and has had a strong impact on Trump’s thinking about foreign affairs, particularly those of Latin America. From Kelley Beaucar Vlahos at responsiblestatecraft.org:
Trump has long flirted with toppling Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, and he has effectively positioned Marco Rubio to do it.
On the day the Gaza peace deal was signed, President Donald Trump told his audience at the Israeli Knesset that Marco Rubio will go down as the greatest secretary of state in “the history of the United States.” He compared him to Henry Kissinger, and bestowed upon him much of the credit for the brokered plan that resulted in the ceasefire and celebrated hostage release.
This, a week, after the Miami Herald described how Rubio had amassed so much power inside the White House—just like Kissinger under President Richard Nixon, wearing both the hats of chief diplomat and head of the National Security Council—that he wasn’t just surviving the tumultuous Trump orbit, he was “thriving.”
This is clearly bad news for Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who is reportedly preparing his country for an invasion. Reports that regime change is the endgame in an aggressive U.S. military counter narcotics operation in the Caribbean get more detailed every day, including plans for CIA covert operations in the country and “Little Bird” Army helicopters ostensibly carrying U.S. special forces 90 miles off the coast of the country. The administration has done little to deny it.
More importantly, these reports indicate that Rubio, a former Florida senator who came to Washington in 2011 and immediately cleaved to the neoconservative foreign policies driving the heady, regime-change crazy Global War on Terror, is at the helm of this operation’s policy and planning. This is no surprise, since toppling Maduro and the Castros in Cuba have been constants in his otherwise shifting foreign policy persona.
But unlike his days as a reliable vote for old-guard hawks who used democracy and freedom to justify overturning governments they did not like, he is now seen as an enlightened adherent of the New Right, which espouses a more nationalist approach that in part seeks to revitalize the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century.
The chosen chose Disco Boots Rubio.
AIPAC has paid big shekels to Lil’ Marco.