Secretary of State Marco Rubio has developed a "reputation as the thirstiest man" and "happily made a deal with the devil," according to a new analysis.
Rubio has his eyes on a 2028 presidential run and has gone full MAGA, Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton writes Thursday.
"Most of America first took notice of Marco Rubio when he gave one of the most-cringe prime-time performances of all time, the official Republican rebuttal to Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address," Parton writes. "No one who watched is likely to forget Rubio’s awkward stare as he furtively reached for a water bottle, cementing his reputation as the thirstiest man in the U.S. Senate. It’s a testament to his limitless ambition that he came back from that and is now one of the most powerful people in the world."
Rubio, dubbed "Little Marco" by President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, has typically focused on national security and foreign policy, and although he has broken with the GOP in the past, including finding evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections — something Republicans now claim to be a "hoax" — Trump appears to have overlooked or ignored that. Not to mention, the former Florida senator's comment about Trump's "small hands" that played out during a 2016 debate on national television.
In his current role, he drives the illegal war in Venezuela, Parton explains.
"According to recent reports in the Wall Street Journal, the extrajudicial killings, CIA covert actions and pending war plans against Venezuela are all being driven by Rubio," she writes.
And although he doesn't always take the lead on each top issue for Trump, "that has just given him time to pursue his own special interests."
"The political establishment, including many Democrats, were relieved when Rubio was chosen for the State Department job, reassured that a supposedly serious fellow with Senate credentials would keep Trump foreign policy from going off the rails," she writes. "The hope was that Rubio might stop the president from doing something silly, like bailing out of NATO or invading Greenland. Little did they know that Rubio had happily made a deal with the devil and now seems to relish the idea of ripping up the world order in Trump’s image."
His main goal has been to fit in to the president's inner circle and carve out a space for his own political future.
"Marco Rubio almost certainly intends to run for president in 2028 and sees his service in that cause as the best way to fulfill his own agenda and expand both his power and his political profile. He’s certainly not the only person in the Trump administration with that idea, but he stands out in that many observers still view him as an 'adult in the room' with establishment credibility. That’s entirely wrong. He’s a fully paid-up MAGA fanatic now, and no one should think otherwise," Parton writes.