From Trump opponent to Trump loyalist: The evolution of Marco Rubio

Summary

From Trump Opponent to Trump Loyalist: The Evolution of Marco Rubio

In this episode of NPR’s Consider This, host Scott Detrow delves into the political transformation of Senator Marco Rubio, charting his journey from a vocal opponent of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race to becoming a staunch Trump supporter and his eventual appointment as Secretary of State in the Trump administration. National political reporter Marianne Levine joins the discussion to provide a comprehensive analysis of Rubio's evolving stance and its broader implications for the Republican Party.

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Marco Rubio’s Contemporary Role and Alignment with Trump

Scott Detrow opens the discussion by highlighting Senator Marco Rubio’s conventional political background compared to other members of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet. Rubio, a seasoned politician with over a decade of experience on foreign relations and intelligence committees, has maintained unwavering support for Trump throughout the recent campaign cycle.

• Notable Interaction:
  • [00:40] Margaret Brennan: "Without using rhetoric like that?"
  • [00:43] Donald Trump: “But Donald Trump doesn't talk like someone who's been in Washington for 30 years training dogs...”

Detrow emphasizes Rubio’s approach to Trump's often abrasive rhetorical style, illustrating how Rubio navigates and responds to Trump’s communication tactics on national platforms.

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Contrast with the 2016 Presidential Campaign

The episode draws a stark contrast between Rubio’s current demeanor and his aggressive stance during the 2016 Republican primaries. Initially seen as a rising star within the GOP, Rubio was a primary critic of Trump, branding him as a “con artist” and cautioning against his leadership style.

• Key Moments from 2016:
  • [02:01] Detrow: “Eight years ago, when he ran against Trump, Rubio called him a con artist. He called his style of leadership dangerous.”
  • [05:03] Trump’s Mockery: “Little Marco...have you seen his hands? They’re like this.”

Rubio’s attempts to maintain a high-ground, policy-focused campaign contrasted sharply with Trump’s populist and often personal attacks, such as mocking Rubio’s nickname “Little Marco” and making derogatory comments about his physical attributes.

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Turning Point: Endorsement and Rapid Alignment with Trump

A significant turning point in Rubio’s political trajectory occurred when he endorsed Trump in May 2016, despite their contentious primary battle. This endorsement marked the beginning of a swift and strategic alignment with Trump’s administration.

• Collaboration Highlights:
  • [09:25] Levine: “Rubio works closely with the Trump administration on Latin America policy... described him as a virtual secretary of state for the administration.”
  • [10:06] Trump Rally Moment: Rubio publicly supported Trump by highlighting and countering Joe Biden’s negative remarks about Trump supporters.

Levine notes that Rubio’s quick reconciliation and collaborative efforts with Trump exemplify his adaptability and strategic positioning within the evolving Republican landscape.

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Policy Shifts and Implications for Secretary of State Role

The episode delves into Rubio’s policy evolution, particularly his recent vote against a substantial $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel. This decision marked a significant departure from Rubio’s previous support for such initiatives, aligning more closely with Trump’s foreign policy skepticism.

• Key Policy Shift:
  • [11:28] Levine: “Rubio voted against the foreign aid bill, citing the federal government wasn’t doing enough on the border.”
  • [12:24] Detrow: “Rubio's reasoning was related to domestic border issues, signaling a shift towards Trump-aligned priorities.”

This policy pivot not only surprised Rubio’s long-time associates but also indicates a broader trend within the Republican Party towards populist and nationalist policies under Trump’s influence.

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Broader Implications for the Republican Party

Marianne Levine provides insight into how Rubio’s transformation reflects the larger realignment within the Republican Party. The shift towards a more populist and Trump-aligned stance has significant ramifications for future GOP strategies and policy directions.

• Party Realignment:
  • [07:27] Trump: “I chose a different route... because the politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party, they're going to leave us a fractured nation.”
  • [08:54] Levine: “Rubio's recognition of where the party is headed indicates a move towards a more populist approach.”

Rubio’s journey underscores the Republican Party’s departure from traditional conservative values towards a platform heavily influenced by Trump’s populist rhetoric and policies.

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Conclusion: Rubio’s Future as Secretary of State

Scott Detrow concludes by reflecting on the significance of Rubio’s political evolution. His transition from a potential presidential contender to a key Trump ally and Secretary of State nominee illustrates the profound impact Trump has had on reshaping the Republican Party’s identity and leadership dynamics.

• Final Thoughts:
  • [02:24] Detrow: “Marco Rubio's political evolution says a lot about how The Republican Party has remade itself around Donald Trump and it gives us some clues about how he might operate as Secretary of State.”

The episode provides a nuanced examination of Marco Rubio’s shifting political stance, offering valuable insights into the ongoing transformation of the Republican Party and what it means for American politics moving forward.

---

Key Quotes for Reference:

• [00:43] Donald Trump: “But Donald Trump doesn't talk like someone who's been in Washington for 30 years training dogs...”
• [05:03] Trump’s Mockery: “Little Marco...have you seen his hands? They’re like this.”
• [09:25] Levine: “Rubio works closely with the Trump administration on Latin America policy... described him as a virtual secretary of state for the administration.”
• [11:28] Levine: “Rubio voted against the foreign aid bill, citing the federal government wasn’t doing enough on the border.”
• [02:24] Detrow: “Marco Rubio's political evolution says a lot about how The Republican Party has remade itself around Donald Trump and it gives us some clues about how he might operate as Secretary of State.”

---

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions, insights, and conclusions presented in the episode, providing a thorough understanding of Marco Rubio’s political journey and its significance within the broader context of American politics.

Transcript

[Scott Detrow]

When compared to some of President elect Trump's other cabinet picks, Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State is pretty conventional. He's a veteran politician who served on foreign relations and intelligence committees for over a decade. And he's been a loyal Trump backer throughout this year's campaign. Take this moment from earlier this month, not long after Trump attacked former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. In graphic terms, she's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle, standing.

[Marianne Levine]

There with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay. Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.

[Scott Detrow]

Rubio was asked about that moment by Margaret Brennan on CBS's Face the Nation. Isn't it possible to make the case.

[Margaret Brennan]

Without using rhetoric like that?

[Donald Trump]

But Donald Trump doesn't talk like someone who's been in Washington for 30 years training dogs. No, but that's not what he said, Mario. You guys know that. Come on. I mean, everybody knows exactly what he was saying.

[Scott Detrow]

They went back and forth. Rubio said this.

[Donald Trump]

It is a point that has been made by people in both parties for decades, and that is you're all for war. And it's easy to be for war when you're in some fancy building and you're safe and sound in Washington, D.C. let's see how much you are for war when you yourself get deployed into combat. That's the point that he was making, that he uses language that maybe is not what we typically hear from someone that works at a think tank. Oh, fine. But I think it's true.

[Scott Detrow]

In 2024, this is a pretty run of the mill TV appearance from a Republican. But it really stands out when you compare it to another Marco Rubio appearance, this one from 2016.

[Donald Trump]

A Donald Trump supporter sucker punched a man the other day at an event. Donald Trump has yet to condemn it. After the man was released from jail, he said, next time, I'll kill him. He still has not condemned it.

[Scott Detrow]

Back then, Rubio was running for the Republican presidential nomination against Donald Trump.

[Donald Trump]

When you run for President of the United States, or if you are President of the United States, you can't just take on the attitude that I'm going to say whatever I want. You can't say whatever you want. It has real life consequences for people in this country and all over the world.

[Scott Detrow]

Eight years ago, when he ran against Trump, Rubio called him a con artist. He called his style of leadership dangerous. Now he is going to work for him. Consider this. Marco Rubio's political evolution says a lot about how The Republican Party has remade itself around Donald Trump and it gives us some clues about how he might operate as Secretary of State. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

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[Scott Detrow]

It'S consider this from NPR. Just how much has Marco Rubio changed as a politician since 2016? And what do those changes tell us about the broader shifts within the Republican Party? Washington Post national political reporter Marianne Levine has dug into this question. She spoke with people who know Rubio well, also spoke with the senator himself, and she wrote about it this summer when Rubio's name was in the mix for Trump's vice presidential pick. She joins us now. Welcome.

[Marianne Levine]

Thanks for having me.

[Scott Detrow]

Let's go back to the beginning, at least to the beginning of Marco Rubio's career in Washington. He's elected to the Senate in 2010. What kind of politician was he at that point? What was his brand? What was he focusing on?

[Marianne Levine]

So Marco Rubio back in 2010, came in through the Tea Party wave. So he was. So he came in as a pretty conservative member of the Senate and he was really viewed as the potential future of the Republican Party. He was young. He was only 39 when he was elected to the Senate. He was Latino. And I think he was viewed as someone who was going to represent a new, younger, more diverse gm.

[Scott Detrow]

And the media gravitates toward him. Of course, this is early on in the Obama years and everyone's looking for the next Obama on the Republican side. And a lot of people said it's this guy, it's Marco Rubio. Here he is Giving a big speech at the 2012 Republican convention, I noticed.

[Donald Trump]

The bartender behind a portable bar in the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father, who worked for many years as a banquet bartender. He was grateful for the work he had, but that's not the life he wanted for us. You see, he stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years. So one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a.

[Scott Detrow]

Room then, Rubio runs for president in 2016. I remember covering that campaign, being in the room in New Hampshire when it felt like Marco Rubio was building momentum and something was happening here. But just like so many other Republicans. Well, every other Republican who ran that year, Marco Rubio runs straight into Donald Trump. Among other things, he gets a nickname, Little Marco.

[Marianne Levine]

Little Marco.

[Scott Detrow]

We were playing other clips of the 2016 campaign. I guess let me frame the question this way. What from that clash is still relevant eight years later? What were the key things that happened in that Republican primary, especially between Marco Rubio and Donald Trump?

[Marianne Levine]

Well, I think we all remember the Little Marco nickname. Rubio. Also just Trump as a con man.

[Scott Detrow]

Right. And here's Rubio making that attack during an interview with cbs.

[Donald Trump]

We're about to turn over the conservative movement to a person that has no ideas of any substance on the important issues. The nuclear codes of the United States, to an erratic individual, and the conservative movement to someone who has spent a career sticking it to working people.

[Marianne Levine]

He had to go after Trump. And I think he started to attack Trump in ways that weren't totally in line with how he had ran earlier in the campaign. Obviously trying to position himself with a positive message, trying to represent himself as, you know, a promise of generational change. And I think he kind of gets down in the mud with Trump in 2016.

[Donald Trump]

He's always calling me Little Marco. And I'll admit, the guy, he's taller than me. He's like 6:2. Which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who's 5 2. Have you seen his hands? They're like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands.

[Scott Detrow]

Yeah. And it's this moment where you realize that what works for Donald Trump often does not work for other Republicans.

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Right.

[Scott Detrow]

Especially a Republican like Marco Rubio who's tried to take the high, sweeping, soaring high road. He's suddenly doing these personal attacks, making these hand sized references, and it just, it just falls flat.

[Marianne Levine]

Yeah, it just doesn't work. I feel like those are early indications that Trump style politics is here to stay.

[Donald Trump]

I want to begin by congrat. I haven't had a chance to speak to him yet, but I want to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory, a big victory in Florida.

[Scott Detrow]

Rubio drops out of the race, and there's a moment that you pinpointed and talked to people about as kind of a changing point for Rubio. He's kind of giving a warning about Trump's style of politics, but also framing a very real trend with Republican voters, with voters in general.

[Donald Trump]

The easiest thing to have done in this campaign is to jump on all those anxieties I just talked about to make people angrier, make people more frustrated. But I chose a different route, and I'm proud of that, because the politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party, they're going to leave us a fractured nation.

[Scott Detrow]

Why in your reporting was this such a key speech?

[Marianne Levine]

From talking to people who knew Rubio at the time fundraised him, it felt like a turning point for him. Even though in the speech, he still sticks to his positive message and says he's proud of the message that he campaigned on. It's also a recognition of where things are in the country, and it's Rubio's recognition that that's where the party is headed.

[Donald Trump]

People are angry, they're frustrated, they're being left behind by this economy, and then they're told, look, if you're against illegal immigration, that makes you a bigot. And if you see jobs and businesses leaving to other countries, you have no right to be frustrated.

[Marianne Levine]

I think it really foreshadows his sort of his direction in the Republican Party and the party's broader move towards a potentially more populist approach in some of their policies.

[Scott Detrow]

What's the best way to frame Rubio's journey as a Trump ally in the Senate over the course of the first Trump presidency? Because I feel like he went from just kind of staying away from the drama of the day to really defending Trump, going out and defending Trump against a lot of attacks, a lot of media criticism.

[Marianne Levine]

Trump and Rubio actually made up pretty fast. I mean, Rubio endorsed Trump in May of 2016, and he works really closely with the Trump administration on Latin America policy, to the point where some people, some reporters and stories described him as a virtual secretary of state for. He also worked really closely with Ivanka Trump on a paid family leave initiative. And so there were efforts to work with the Trump administration pretty early on in Trump's first term. And I think the two of them Made up pretty quickly.

[Scott Detrow]

Yeah. Was there a moment from this past campaign that stood out to you when it comes to how Rubio has aligned himself with Trump?

[Marianne Levine]

I think there was one moment at a rally in Pennsylvania where Trump was speaking. He invites Rubio on stage.

[Scott Detrow]

Marco, will you come up here? Good. Good man, this one.

[Marianne Levine]

And Rubio tells him about Biden's remarks where he appeared to suggest that Trump supporters were, quote, unquote, garbage.

[Donald Trump]

Well, I wasn't going to say anything, but I have breaking news for you, Mr. President. You may not have heard this just moments ago. Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage.

[Marianne Levine]

And I think that really stood out to me in the sense of just showing his loyalty to Trump and also showing that he was already on the attack against the Democrats in that moment and kind of seized on that moment to inform Trump of these remarks that were going to start a whole nother new cycle.

[Scott Detrow]

I guess the one area I'm really curious about and I'm wondering what you're thinking and what you've heard from people is that I think the big policy departure where Marco Rubio has kind of stayed in the traditional pre Trump Republican role mold has been on a lot of the big foreign policy questions, right? Like Ukraine, like when it comes to full throated support for NATO for things like that. Any sense of how Marco Rubio works as a Secretary of State on those big questions where Trump has really tried to remake the Republican Party?

[Marianne Levine]

I think it's hard. It's hard to say right now. I mean, I think that one sign of where Rubio may go and where some of his views may have evolved is earlier this year, he voted against a $95 billion foreign aid bill that delivered billions of DOL dollars to Ukraine and Israel. And this was a bill that was heavily supported by Republicans like Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, but Rubio voted against it. And I think that was a moment that surprised a lot of former Rubio associates. I remember talking to someone who said that Rubio in 2015 would not have voted against that aid package. And so. And Rubio's reasoning about that was basically that he thought the federal government wasn't doing enough on the border, which obviously unrelated, but I think that that's kind of an early indication that he might go more in the direction of where Trump has gone on foreign policy.

[Scott Detrow]

That is Washington Post national political reporter Marianne Levine talking about Marco Rubio and his journey from Trump critic to Trump's pick for Secretary of State. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Marianne Levine]

Thanks for having me.

[Scott Detrow]

This episode was produced by Connor Donovan, it was edited by Courtney Dorning, and Art executive producer is Sami Yenigun. It's Consider this from npr. I'm Scott Detrow.

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