On Monday, the Senate confirmed Marco Rubio as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, making him the first high-level Cabinet official approved by the chamber under the new administration.
The confirmation vote occurred just hours after Trump was sworn in as president. The overwhelmingly bipartisan vote was 99 to 0, with no senators opposing the nomination.
Rubio has been a Republican senator from Florida since 2011, and his nomination received strong support from several Senate Democrats, who described their colleague as highly qualified for the position.
Rubio has gone from Trump’s adversary to ally in recent years, marking a remarkable political turnaround. He will now play an important role as a senior official in Trump’s new administration.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Rubio labeled Trump a “con artist,” while Trump mocked him as “Little Marco.”
Rubio strengthened his foreign policy credentials as the leading Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee following his failed GOP presidential primary bid in 2016, while also developing relationships within his party and across the aisle.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has named state Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill Rubio’s seat.
Many Senate Democrats applauded Rubio’s nomination. During his confirmation hearing, New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described Rubio as “well-qualified to serve as secretary of state.”
During senators’ questions, Rubio expressed his support for NATO, as well as a bipartisan bill he co-sponsored that states the US cannot withdraw from the alliance without Senate approval or an act of Congress.
During his confirmation hearing, Rubio also discussed the importance of the US taking a strong stance toward China, referring to the Chinese Communist Party as a “potent” and “dangerous” adversary.
“They’re a technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor, an economic competitor, geopolitical competitor, a scientific competitor now, in every realm, it’s an extraordinary challenge and one that I believe will define the 21st century,” he said.
“We’ve allowed them to get away with things, and frankly the Chinese did what any country in the world would do given these opportunities, they took advantage of it, so now we’re dealing with the ramifications of it,” said the president.
“Much of what we need to do to confront China is done at home. It’s not just abroad; it’s also here at home,” he explained. “We have to rebuild our domestic industrial capacity, and we have to make sure the United States is not reliant on any single other nation for any of our critical supply chains.”
In response to questions about Russia’s war against Ukraine, Rubio said it’s “unrealistic to believe” that Ukraine can push Russian forces back to where they were before the 2022 invasion, and that the official US position should be to end the war.
Rubio added that he and Trump agree that the war must end and chastised the Biden administration for failing to establish a clear “end goal” for the conflict.
“What (Russian President) Vladimir Putin has done is unacceptable, there’s no doubt about it, but this war has to end, and I think it should be the official policy of the United States that we want to see it end,” Rubio told reporters.
