Marco Rubio has a drinking problem.
It first showed up years ago, under klieg lights and national scrutiny, when a shaky hand reached for a sip from a bottle of water, all caught on camera as he gave the GOP response to President Barack Obama's 2013 State of the Union address. It became a national joke but it was also a metaphor: a man parched for power, exposed as he tried to drink on his own.
A decade later, the thirst remains. Only now, Rubio isn’t sipping nervously. He’s chugging obediently from the firehose-in-chief.
Last Saturday, standing at a podium to explain the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and extrajudicial kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, Rubio looked like what he has spent his entire career trying not to be — small.
Small in stature, small in independence, infinitely small in courage. Puffing himself up with half-assed talking points while a slouched and sleepy Donald Trump loomed behind him, Rubio strained to sound like a statesman but came off like a little tike, gulping excitedly from the well of sycophancy.
Poor little Marco. Still trying to drink his way into relevance.
As Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Rubio has presided over a hollowing out of American diplomacy, all while insisting the pipes are flowing. Career diplomats have been sidelined or purged. Experts have been replaced with loyalists. Longstanding diplomatic programs like USAID and PEPFAR have been washed out. And that’s only the beginning.
No longer the parched junior senator clutching a Poland Spring, Rubio has become a different joke.
He once argued that strong diplomacy was America’s first line of defense. Now he acts as if diplomacy is a weakness, to be flushed away in favor of blunt threats and cable-news bravado.
He used to come off polished, in his days heading the Senate Intelligence Committee. Some Democrats even appreciated his moderation and modulation. Not anymore. On Sunday, speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rubio tied himself in knots trying to explain why the U.S. invaded Venezuela, and whatever the hell comes next. He was drowning in doublespeak.
The Venezuela debacle — that’s what it will eventually be called — is the clearest example yet of Rubio’s transformation from policymaker to tongue-tied mouthpiece. For years, he has framed Latin America as a simple morality play, strongmen versus freedom. But he used to resist calls to take up arms. On CNN in 2019, he said, “I don’t know of anyone who is calling for a military intervention.”
At the podium at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, Little Marco changed his tune. He turned, looked up at his dictator, and foamed at the mouth: “The 47th president of the United States is not a game player. When he tells you that he’s going to do something, when he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it … Don’t play games when this president’s in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”
What’s not going to turn out well, Little Marco, is the illusion that you can play war games abroad, invade a country, then manage it without paying a steep price.
The invasion appears to have violated international law, bypassed congressional authorization, and detonated whatever credibility the U.S. had in the region. Allies were blindsided, adversaries emboldened. The Maduro regime remains in power. God knows what comes next.
Little Marco says he knows. He is boasting that oil companies are going to save the day, as everyone swims in riches. But oil companies are saying, “What?” They are balking, unwilling to put businesses and employees at risk.
Rubio’s most consistent role is no longer architect or strategist. Instead, it’s trying to be Trump’s favorite. When Trump slurs out a threat, Rubio stammers out a water-down. When Trump contradicts himself, Rubio contradicts the contradictions. When Trump bungles foreign policy, Rubio says he’s “Going to address a problem.”
He absorbs it all like a sponge.
What makes Rubio especially diminished is how openly competitive his loyalty has become. He isn’t just supporting Trump — he’s pining to be the golden child among all the acolytes. If Pete Hegseth is the warrior and Kristi Noem is the beauty queen, that makes Rubio the court jester, because most of what he says is laughable.
And the kicker is that Rubio most likely thinks that kow-towing to Trump, and wrestling with Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and Kash Patel, will help him usurp the equally inept JD Vance as the GOP frontrunner in 2028. Little Marco has big dreams.
There were high hopes for him once, but rather than acting as a moderating force or principled voice he surrendered his autonomy and dignity, enthusiastically advocating for policies that are abjectly inhumane and harmful.
His shift from Trump critic to cheerleader is nothing short of mindnumbing. It is gutless capitulation at its worst, loyalty to Trump outweighing any commitment to independent judgment or diplomatic norms.
Trump’s penchant for third-grade nicknames shows the very essence of an infantilist. But occasionally his nicknames land, because they expose something true. “Little Marco” stuck because it captured a person who wants power so badly he keeps making himself smaller to get it. In the wake of Venezuela, Rubio has become Tom Thumb.
The only thing large about Rubio are his ears, now full of Trump’s grating, slurred, and sinister corrosiveness, tidal-waving over Rubio like a full-service car wash.
Rubio thinks he is preparing to man the faucets of our country. But Little Marco has diminished himself by drowning in Trump’s poisonous Kool-Aid. A pint-size bottle of Poland Spring couldn’t wash that away.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”
