In the first months of President Donald Trump’s second administration, Marco Rubio looked like the odd man out. Now, after U.S. forces snatched Venezuelan tyrant Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York, Rubio might be the second most powerful man in Washington.
Over the past year the former senator from Florida has accumulated a portfolio that would have worn out the late Henry Kissinger. Like the old grand master, Rubio now serves as the president’s secretary of state and national security adviser. He is also the federal government’s acting chief archivist and was acting administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) until he put it out of business in July. As of last weekend, Rubio appears to be something like the proconsul for Venezuela. The man has more jobs than a temp agency.
The most remarkable thing about Rubio’s rise, though, is that less than a year ago, in the early days of the administration, it looked like he had been neutered. Rubio was bullied by Elon Musk for failing to fire more USAID staff. And it seemed he was out of the inner circle, with the most consequential foreign policy decisions in those first 100 days falling to the president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff. The Atlantic even ran a profile of Witkoff, who was setting the agenda for Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine, that called him “the real secretary of state.”
The ideological momentum in those days was with Vice President J.D. Vance. Vance’s isolationist-leaning former Senate staffers and other allies were getting the crucial senior subcabinet posts, while more traditional Republicans loyal to Rubio were largely locked out. This dynamic was captured in a famous photo of the Oval Office meeting with Trump, Vance, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. As Trump and Vance berate Zelensky, Rubio is seated uncomfortably on a couch, looking like “Little Marco,” the cruel moniker Trump gave him during the bruising 2016 presidential primary.
Marco doesn’t seem so little anymore. Last week he was a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, that has become a second White House. And while there is no doubt that Trump is the decider on foreign policy, the dramatic operation to abduct Maduro reflected Rubio’s hawkish realism—and contradicted the advice of MAGA’s restrainer wing, which Vance represents. The same could be said of Trump’s warning to Iran’s rulers last week not to attack protesters. Indeed, the photos from Mar-a-Lago show Vance on a video call as Trump, Rubio, and other cabinet members sit together in a secure conference area to watch the Venezuela operation unfold.
