The remaking of Marco Rubio

Perhaps you’ve heard about wearing multiple hats at work, but four? It might be too many for most people, but not Marco Rubio. As the New York Times put it this month, he’s become the “secretary of everything” for the Trump administration: secretary of state, interim national security adviser, acting USAID administrator (albeit for a gutted agency), and acting archivist of the United States at the National Archives and Records Administration.

Put another way, if the Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency asked Rubio what he accomplished this week, it would be a long email. And the former Republican senator from Florida is proving to have better survival instincts in Trump world than some observers expected.

Nahal Toosi, a columnist and senior foreign affairs correspondent at Politico, is one of those Rubio skeptics. She predicted in January that Rubio wouldn’t last long in the second Trump administration, perhaps less than a year. But she’s less sure now, as Rubio emerges from the administration’s first 100 days with a longer list of titles than he began with.

Toosi spoke with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about Rubio’s growing portfolio, how he’s juggling it all, and how he’s accommodated himself to a second Trump administration, including on big issues like immigration and foreign aid. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

How did Marco Rubio become so important at work?

He abandoned everything, or much of, what he has stood for in the past, endeared himself to Trump, supported the president vocally and through policy changes, and earned the president’s trust.

I will also say it’s hard to get into the Trump circle. There’s not a lot of people who meet the loyalty tests. Rubio has proven that he can do that. The reason that it’s important to point this out is because when he took the initial position of secretary of state, many people viewed him as one of the weakest in Trump’s orbit. I wrote an entire column about how all these people in town were saying, He is not going to last very long. He won’t last even six months as scretary of state.

The fact that he has climbed the ranks and taken all these positions and earned the president’s trust in such a way — that is really remarkable, but it goes to show how unrecognizable he is compared to what Marco Rubio was five, 10 years ago.

Marco Rubio’s been around a long time. When you hear candidate Donald Trump talking about draining the Washington swamp, it’s people like Marco Rubio. There were reports that he was asking President Biden for more funding for USAID before he became one of the faces of the elimination of USAID. He’s not exactly MAGA. Are you saying that there hasn’t been much tension between Rubio and Trump?

I wouldn’t say [Rubio is] a traditional Republican. He came in on a wave of reactionary [sentiment against] the establishment. But he over time established his bona fides in the Senate as a hawkish Republican: pro-human rights, pro-democracy promotion, definitely pro-humanitarian assistance, the type of guy who supported Ukraine, wants to be tough on dictatorships around the world, including Iran.

But I would say he also has proven to be a very flexible type of politician over the last several years. He has moderated his positions. My understanding is he’s gone out and learned a lot about the American heartland. But now that he has joined the Trump team, he has really gone to the MAGA world, to the point where even far-right influencers like Laura Loomer are now praising Marco Rubio.

And I imagine much of that acceleration has happened via his initial job, secretary of state?

Yes. And part of the reason that that has happened is because he’s used that perch to agree very vocally with a lot of Trump policies, right? In defending, for instance, President Trump’s takedown of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy in that famous Oval Office meeting.

But wasn’t Rubio one of the only Cabinet members in that meeting who looked uncomfortable?

He looked like he was sinking into the couch. But afterward he got on TV, he went public, he defended the president. He realized immediately, Okay, I have to speak out, or it’s gonna look like I’m not supportive of President Trump, right? And I have to be subordinate to him. Look, another area where he’s been astonishingly pro-Trump is the anti-immigration stuff.

This is really remarkable for Rubio because he has often touted his own family’s immigrant story. They’re from Cuba. And now he is seemingly gleefully stripping students of their visas and negotiating deals that are sending people to a prison in El Salvador without them getting proper hearings in court. And he’s even suggesting he’ll defy the judges if they request information in support of Trump.

Some of these things you think, Wow, does he have to go this far? Obviously it’s working for him in terms of surviving under Trump. But who knows, in a month from now Marco Rubio may be out of favor. A lot of people thought that Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who was pushed out, would last longer than he did. Now that Rubio is actually in charge of these key portfolios — national security adviser and the State Department — in a way he has a bigger target on his back too. Because he’s going to be responsible for any major crisis that happens.

This is the job he most recently acquired, Donald Trump’s national security adviser. What exactly does that entail?

The national security adviser is based at the White House, and they are like a point guard. They keep an eye on what all the agencies are thinking. They coordinate and they bring together options for the president when it comes to foreign policy and national security issues. Now, that’s if they do it in the way that’s considered proper, which is to be an honest broker, to be the guy that says, here’s what State is thinking. Here’s what DOD is thinking, here’s what the CIA wants.

A lot of national security advisers acquire more power than that. They very much have their own points of view. They do their own negotiations. They rival other people in the administration for power. That’s always caused a bit of tension in past administrations. So we definitely could have seen Rubio at odds with a national security adviser in the future, but now it would be like being at odds with himself.

Is there any conflict there? Does being Trump’s national security adviser come at the expense of his other roles, especially secretary of state?

One of the key mysteries right now is how is he going to do both jobs at the same time. And remember, he has two other jobs, but let’s put those aside.

How he splits his time is something that’s going to be very important to watch. The only person who’s done this in the past is Henry Kissinger. And that was in the ’70s. And back then, the world was, to be honest, not as complicated. Not that it was great, but it was not what we have now.

What do you think he’s excited about accomplishing as our secretary of state, if not our national security adviser, our chief archivist, and the head of USAID?

If he survives in the roles for several months or over a year, that is an accomplishment. Under President Trump, survival is difficult. He has had a constant turnover in the past. In terms of other accomplishments, if this administration were to strike important deals with Iran, say over its nuclear program, or bring about a peace between Russia and Ukraine, these are things that they can point to as accomplishments.

I do want to point out, there is another major player in terms of foreign policy right now, and that’s Steve Witkoff. He’s a special envoy for the president. He’s actually the lead on portfolios like Iran and Ukraine. But Rubio can very much have a major role in those as well. And ultimately the president is the one who’s going to take the credit for the accomplishments and knowing how Rubio is operating, he will definitely cede the limelight to the president.