Consider This from NPR - Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

It's been a little more than a week since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Vice President JD Vance was in the meeting too. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, sat on an Oval Office couch, mostly silent, as Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader. Along the way, the president and vice president made it clear just how much of the established global order they are ready to upend. An order that for most of his career, Rubio has defended, and worked to help hold up. So what changed ...and what do those changes mean? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's no secret that much, if not most, of the Republican Party is in lockstep with President Trump. The golden age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America. We have seen members of the President's party fall in line over and over on a wide range of issues since Trump returned to office some six weeks ago. Sometimes that has meant compromising on issues and beliefs that had defined them for years.

Hi, Mr. Cassidy. Hi. Mr. Cassidy. Hi. Mr. Langford. Hi. Mr. Langford. That was Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who had expressed concerns about vaccine

resistance voting for Trump's pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has a long history of opposition to vaccines and chaired an anti-vaccine nonprofit called Children's Health Defense. Here's Iowa Senator and military veteran Joni Ernst, who has spent years advocating for women in the military and trying to raise awareness about sexual assault in the military. I think for a number of our senators, they want to make sure that any allegations have been cleared. And that's why we have to have a very thorough vetting process.

Ernst was talking about Trump's pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault. His lawyer has called the claims false, and police never filed charges. And before he was nominated, Hegseth had argued against women in combat. He talked about it in a podcast hosted by Sean Ryan in November. Because I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. Hegseth softened his stance a bit during his confirmation hearing, and Ernst ultimately

voted to confirm Hexeth. Then there's Marco Rubio and Ukraine. I fear that if we do not send a strong and decisive message, that I think this will be spun against us. That's Senator Marco Rubio in 2014, speaking on the Senate floor shortly after Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. I think this will be used as evidence to our allies and other countries around the world

why America is no longer reliable, either economically or militarily. And the consequences of that could extend far beyond Europe into other regions of the world like Asia. This is not a game. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Days after the Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine's

border, Senator Rubio defended the country on MSNBC. Look, Putin can't win. There always has to be a real, legitimate Ukrainian state that we have a relationship with. And I don't know why we can't begin to openly say, we will support them as long as they are willing to fight, even if it's an insurgency. Fast forward three years.

Rubio is now Secretary of State in the second Trump administration. And that steadfast support that Rubio had as a senator has taken a backseat to the administration's hardline approach to Ukraine. It's been very clear from the beginning that President Trump views this as a protracted, stalemated conflict, and it needs to come to an end. And no one has any idea or any plan to bring it to an end. The plan of the Ukrainians up to now and their allies on Capitol Hill and the people you talk to in other countries is, let's just keep giving them as much as they need for

as long as it takes. That's not a strategy. Consider this. As Senator, Marco Rubio supported America's role as a global leader. Now, as Secretary of State, he has embraced Donald Trump's America First policies. Policies that are having dire consequences for Ukraine and creating turbulence in the rest of the world. From NPR, I'm Scott Detro.

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It has been a little more than a week since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Vice President J.D. Vance was in the meeting too, and so was Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The nation's top diplomat was sitting on an Oval Office couch, mostly silent, as Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader and in the process made it clear just how much of the established global order they are ready to upend. An order that for most of his career, Rubio has defended and worked to help hold up. So what changed and what do those changes mean? To answer these questions, we're going to talk to Professor

of International Politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School, Daniel Dresner. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Let's start by rewinding just a little bit. You wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times about Rubio's political evolution back in December before he took office. And you asked which Marco Rubio is going to show up for the job, the democracy promoting optimist or more inward looking anti-global pessimist.

A month in, do you feel like you have a verdict? Oh yeah, it seems pretty obvious. The Rubio that's shown up is the one that will defer to Trump's America First image, the one that will close embassies and consulates, the one that, according to widespread reports, has yet to really push back on any of Trump's foreign policy instincts. Does that surprise you?

Not really. Marco Rubio did articulate a more democracy promoting, human rights promoting foreign policy vision when he ran for president in 2016, and he lost. And he not only lost, but Donald Trump humiliated him in a lot of ways on the campaign stage. Rubio is a lot of things, but one thing is a political survivor and he survived Trump's first term and has managed to get into the good graces of Trump over the last 10 years. And the way he survived is by altering his worldview. He's demonstrated tremendous ideological flexibility and by doing so was, you know, considered

for vice president and eventually was given the secretary of state position. And I'm sure Rubio thought of this as potentially a stepping stone to run for president again, or certainly, you know, an action that would give him the prestige of traditional secretaries of state. You know, Marco Rubio is not the only Republican by far to change big positions and align them with what President Trump is promoting. But I think this particular issue of Ukraine, and you have that visual that rocketed around the internet of Rubio kind of slumped into the couch almost, like absorbing into the couch like the Homer Simpson meme. This particular issue of Ukraine, Rubio and so many other Republicans were so out there

in terms of defending this country, standing up for this country, making sure the United States was continuing to fund this country. Then you see how he tweets about what happened in the Oval Office afterwards saying President Trump was standing up for the United States. That particular issue, I feel like, is a hard one to square. How do you feel about it? I think there are two things about Rubio that make it particularly noticeable for him.

The first is that as that Oval Office meeting demonstrated, he has the world's worst poker face. It was obvious that this was not something he wanted to see happen. Anyone looking at the body language could tell why that is, and because Rubio's smart enough to know what the implications were of Trump berating Zelensky in the Oval Office. You know, to be fair, Rubio did vote against Ukraine aid back in 2024 because of claims that he wanted to prioritize focus on the southern border.

There's this long line of various high profile cabinet secretaries who more traditional Republicans hope can be a moderating influence. I think the first Secretary of State under Trump, Rex Tillerson, is a good example of that and he ended up being humiliated when he was fired and then mocked by President Trump and others in the administration. How much influence can you have over foreign policy when you're a Secretary of State who is not seemingly one of the key decision makers in the presidency? Not much.

It doesn't end well. Secretaries of State, in some ways, whether they are considered influential or not, is in part a function of the relationship and trust they have with the president. This is how James Baker was considered an outstanding Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush, for example, or George Schultz to some extent under Ronald Reagan. On the other hand, Secretaries of State who have been considered on the outside looking in, like let's say Colin Powell during George W. Bush's first term, generally are not given

high marks by historians. And so the problem that Rubio has is not just that he has little influence, it's that if he tried to exercise any influence, Trump would probably tweet just a long list of scorn headed towards Rubio or Byron. So what does that mean for policy? What it means for policy is that don't look to Marco Rubio as an indicator for what foreign policy is going to look like. Marco Rubio will be the endorser. He will try to perhaps offer a patina of rationality for why Trump is doing what he's doing. But the truth is, is that in this administration, foreign policy is being run from the White House and in particular, the Oval Office. It's Daniel Dresdner, Professor of international politics at Tufts University.

Thank you so much. Thank you. This episode was produced by Erica Ryan and Brianna Scott with Audio Engineering by Ted Meebay. It was edited by Courtney Dornig. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detro.