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Does anyone have any ideas about what is going on with Marco Rubio as SecState?
Rubio's substantive political views are those of a swamp neocon on foreign policy and a conventional GOPe conservative on domestic policy. He isn't noted for his personal loyalty to Trump (to put things lightly). So what is Trump's motivation for appointing him? Rubio is a Ukraine war sceptic, but there are lots of Ukraine war sceptics with foreign policy experience who are closer to Trump. This looks like the same mistake Trump made appointing Tillerson in his first term.
This is sufficiently hard to explain that I am finding the left-wing conspiracy theory plausible (that the point isn't to get Rubio into the Cabinet, it's to get him out of the Senate, and Trump has already agreed with DeSantis on who will be appointed to the vacant Senate seat, probably a Trump family member).
Supposedly Rubio was the other top pick for VP. Vance got that, Rubio is given the alternative prize of Secretary of State. Rubio wanted to quit the senate previously but other Republicans convinced him to stay. Here's his chance to bounce and do something else.
I think perhaps you overestimate Trump's animosity towards "Little Marco, thirstiest man you've ever seen". Trump crushed him in the 2016 primary and now wants his support at the highest level. I don't think there is a feeling of animosity or contradiction inside of Trump.
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I wouldn’t be quite so bold about it as @Ben___Garrison, but, uh, I don’t understand why people keep expecting coherent plans out of Trump. He was the vibes-based President.
If Rubio’s shown the right kind of enthusiasm, Trump isn’t going to have a problem folding him into the enterprise. When he inevitably butts heads, Trump will throw him out. Whether Rubio accomplishes anything in the meantime is more about his level of ass-kissing than his stated politics.
Personally, I give this dynamic a lot of credit for the legal hurdles faced by the Trump admin. But I doubt that’ll convince anyone who prefers the Deep State explanation.
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Most of his confirmed appointments seem to be Rubio tier or worse. Complained about the Cheney's during his campaign and literally appointed a Cheney loyalist and ex-advisor as his national security advisor. Trump's criteria for a cabinet member is how loudly nice they are too him, not their political policy.
Really the big question surrounding Trump's second term was, "Has he learned from his first term?" and the answer is clearly no. X seems to be in near open revolt after all the appointments and Thune getting voted Majority lead. He's gonna lose all the libertarian support, all the weird center-left? populist RFK support and so on. It'll be funny if he loses the house because he appoints to many people from it and republicans all lose the follow up special elections.
He's going to lose maybe 1/3 of those, if that. The rest will get into the Trump cult mindset where Trump is always right and will either change their own ideologies to match wholesale, explain away Trump's actions (5-dimensional chess!) or just ignore the cognitive dissonance. I mean, that's been the general pattern with so many others Trump converts previously, why would it change?
That's just people, every day we negatively polarize just a little bit more into being a complete magatard or a woke zealot.
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Libertarians tend to be contrarians who are comfortable with preaching their message from the sidelines while the mainstream ignores them. It is my impression that a smaller but still significant percentage of the other eclectic groups that flocked to Trump this time around are made up of those with a similar mindset. If I’m right about that, they’re probably more likely to jump ship when they don’t get their way than Trump’s other supporters are.
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Trump needs establishment allies. Marco Rubio in an Uber prestigious spot fits the bill nicely.
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As some smarter people have said, Trump is not an entirely unserious person, but has only one earnestly held political belief, which is a fondness for tariffs and an obsession with the balance of trade. This is his one issue, not immigration or gun rights or taxation or the size of the federal government or free speech or anything else. He has cared about it for fifty years and it is as sincere an ideological stance as that of any other ‘conviction-based’ politician.
Anything that isn’t tariffs is something Trump is malleable on. He may have feelings or be drawn in one direction or another but it’s more vague and he can be (often easily) persuaded. As for why he picked Rubio, Trump is easily flattered, and while the warm embrace of a loyal ally is nice, the pledging of an erstwhile enemy to one’s banner is a much better feeling. In this, Trump is a smarter leader than he lets on; nobody is truly loyal, but someone who can convert an enemy to a friend and make him feel truly accepted is rarer than it seems.
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5D chess move would be he removes him from his Senate seat, which gives Desantis the pick to replace him.
And Desantis will pick someone closer to Trump's ideal so the Senate will be a bit more favorable to the Trump agenda.
And Rubio gets fired as SecState inside 2 years, probably.
Oh goodness.
Yes, Trump's grand move is to empower Desantis, the man who tried to kill the king less than a year ago, with whom there's still bad blood privately, and who has only begrudgingly fallen into line. To replace Rubio... a senator who hasn't really made an anti-Trump stink since 2016.
Why not do this against Murkowski instead, a senator who voted to impeach Trump?
Alternatively, why not do this to a House seat, given that chamber is likely to be far closer.
Unironically plausible, given Trump is so utterly capricious with his nominees. Rubio could be setting himself up to get the same fate that befell Jeff Sessions.
Desantis was the one who was quickest to see where the winds were blowing and endorse the guy without reservation.
By comparison, I still remember when Trump's nickname for Rubio was "Little Marco."
And it is also obvious that replacing a Senator is a much higher-leverage move than replacing a house member, in general.
Would she accept?
Also that replacing a House member requires a special election, which means that the Republicans are down a seat (with a single-figure majority) until the special election can be held, a period which will include a key budget battle. Johnson has already warned Trump not to appoint too many Republican House members - it isn't clear to me how much this is a joke and how much is a genuine worry about the size of his majority.
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Yeah, that one's going to stick around to the end of his career.
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He only endorsed when it was very clear that Trump was going to trounce him in the primaries. Haley was the only semi-major candidate left in after Iowa. And his endorsement was more like a detente at the time.
What does this have to do with anything? Ron's nickname was "desanctimonious".
Not when Trump will likely have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, vs a very narrow majority in the House that's known for being chaotic and unpredictable.
Yes, and as we can see running against Trump in the primaries and getting a nickname doesn't suddenly mean Trump won't turn around and treat you favorably later.
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...Could you elaborate on your model here? Like, it seems you're positing that Trump and Desantis are enemies, and further that his supporters should consider them enemies and prefer conflict between them rather than cooperation. Would that be accurate?
They're not bitter ideological enemies, but they are political rivals in the same vein as Sanders vs Warren.
Trump is a 2nd-term President - he doesn't have any meaningful political rivals. I can see him wanting to punish DeSantis for disloyalty out of wounded ego, but I can also see him not bothering.
The political rivalry that now matters is the battle to succeed Trump - between Vance and DeSantis (and others, but as the sitting VP and the most popular conservative governor they are the best-positioned candidates for the 2028 primary).
As a non-American I don't feel very confident in my impression of these intra-party struggles for power, but somehow the way you talk about it feels off. You don't feel like "guys can beat the shit out of each other, and drink a beer together the following evening" applies here?
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But you understand that we, the base they both depend on for their continued careers, want them to work together, right?
Sure, but voters are bad at punishing politicians for specific transgressions in the best of times. If Desantis really wanted to snub Trump he could likely get away with it if he staged it correctly, and didn't go too far like nominating a Democrat. That's not to say that that's likely to happen, just that it's a possibility, which is part of why it's implausible that Trump has some 4D plan in his head. It's far more likely that one of Trump's advisors put Rubio's name forward, Trump went "oh yeah, that guy, he's alright, he didn't vote to impeach me" and that was it.
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It's simple: People falsely attribute policies they personally prefer to politicians they like the vibes of. This denial of reality isn't infinite, but it is very strong. Right-leaning isolationists tired of "forever wars" thus falsely think Trump shares their view, or is even an outright pacifist. They use ridiculously overfit evidence like "no new wars happened under Trump", and aggressively ignore everything else like Trump nearly sparking a war with Iran, entangling us further in Israel, not withdrawing from Afghanistan, sending weapons to Ukraine, wafflemaxxing on China, employing hawks like Bolton or Pompeo, etc.
Trump doesn't like war in and of itself, but he hates being seen as "weak" far, far, FAR more. Avoiding situations that "make us look weak" is the amorphous basis of his entire foreign policy.
Although I must say it's entertaining to watch people try to come up with ever more elaborate justifications to resolve their cognitive dissonance. The "4D chess" hypotheses are always worth a laugh.
He did begin the process, it just only finished under the Biden administration. I agree with everything else.
He delayed endlessly, and if he were re-elected there was a good chance he would have delayed even longer past the date he had previously set.
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During the campaign he said US shouldn't have left Bagram, Bagram is in Afghanistan, by transitive property that means remaining in Afghanistan.
This has far more to do with Trump monday-morning quarterbacking than anything else.
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I think the whole idea, and I’m sort of on the fence about how true this is, was that you didn’t have to give Bagram back and we could just have kept it as essentially imperial property, like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Apparently it would have been extremely easy to defend basically indefinitely with minimal manpower. Bagram is (was) absolutely a huge airbase and was a massive strategic asset to the US & Allies in the region.
This isn’t as strange as it might first appear, this was a live issue in the whole “counterinsurgency vs counterterrorism” debate on the fate of Afghanistan. The counterterrorism camp basically said sod the afghans internal politics, they were unimportant and not worth any nation building effort, and that they should just use Bagram as an operational base to hunt Al Qaeda.
They do see kind of right in retrospect.
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He also got outmaneuvered on Ukraine and with all the MIC Russian collusion agitprop had limited options when it came to Ukraine without giving their propaganda more credence and further tanking his reelection prospects. The Soleimani thing was pointless though and did nothing to better America's position in the ME and that's entirely on him. He's also definitely in Israel's pocket, but so is most of the US government, there's a reason we'll never get the full info on Epstein. Only politicians I can think of not owned by them without doing research would be the ones owned by Islamic interests and Thomas Massie.
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Aren't these almost the same thing? The way you avoid wars is by being seen as strong and, crucially, as willing to fight if necessary. Countries that appear weak, or appear strong but unwilling to fight, are the ones that end up being attacked.
We’re not actually worried about being attacked. Not like Russia rolling over the border to Ukraine. It’s the rest of our interests that are at risk. Erosion of our hegemony over the ocean, space, finance, etc. A long series of bad trades just under the margin of what we’re willing to fight. Securing that is more complicated than just looking dangerous.
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No. He was willing to stay in dumb wars far longer than we should have (e.g. his endless delays on withdrawing from Afghanistan) because actually exiting would lock in the losses that had been practically inevitable for a long time, which "would look weak". One could say that being in the Middle East at all is a serious misallocation of American resources.
I don't deny the logic of not being seen as a pushover on the international stage, but Trump's fear of "looking weak" was far more driven by Fox News pundits than by actual geopolitical perceptions.
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Nah it's 2024, you don't need to beat your chest and throw your spear threateningly in the direction of the rival tribe's line of warriors. We have enough nukes to destroy the world multiple times over. Speak softly and carry a big stick and what not. Trump's bravado stems more from insecurity and narcissism, which makes him easy to manipulate by the deep state.
Maybe we're talking about different things. I'm thinking of Obama talking about red lines in Syria, then not doing anything about it. Or Putin hinting about using nukes over foreign involvement in Ukraine and then not. I agree one can also go too far and be easily baited.
I don't see how Syria made the US look weak and vulnerable. It just made it apparent that leadership was out of touch since he had no popular support for involvement in Syria and had to backtrack.
If anything Iraq and Afghanistan have done the most to make the US look vulnerable. They showed that a strong enough opposition can actually defeat the US military and this was a case of the US overextending. Too much chest beating.
Russia is harder to say since the information environment has gone fully 1984 and there is almost no factual information circulating in western media at this point about the conflict. Equal odds we are deluding ourselves about Putin's red lines.
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Tanner Greer suggests that it is because Rubio shares Trump's economic vision, and Trump's economic vision is intended to become the centerpiece of his foreign policy strategy.
Interesting.
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Well Nixon's opening to China solved the cold war, Trump may try to engineer it's own opening to Russia - so you need someone that is dove-ish on Ukraine but hawkish on China. Rubio seems to fit the bill.
China needs to be managed. They want 2 things - the nine dash line and Taiwan. Both are negotiable I think, but there needs to be sticks and carrots.
The nine dash line is much less important that Taiwan. Control over Taiwan lets China into the Philippines sea, which cannot be completely isolated from the world ocean like the South China sea can.
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Secretary of State is one position that really does benefit from having career politician in it. The politics of diplomacy is wild. Some say Rubio is a foreign policy wonk, so maybe simply that was it?
The right-wing conspiracy theory is that it will allow DeSantis to appoint a lightweight and run himself for Senate. He is term limited. And it Rubio could run for Florida Governor.
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Rubio hasn't been formally confirmed yet, has he? It's "sources say" but sources have said all sorts of stuff that hasn't happened. One theory is that Trump team is leaking fake info to various sources to see who passes it on and thus reveals unreliability.
Assuming this is true, though...
Tillerson was sacked for lack of personal loyalty and was replaced with even more hawkish and neoconnish Pompeo. If Rubio gets in then it's just proof that it's not a mistake, it's what Trump intends to do.
If the image that Trump supporters (and opponents) have constructed in their heads of Trump that goes majorly against the grain of the general thrust of postwar American foreign policy differs from reality... well, that can't be helped. In general, foreign policy tends to the be one thing where political changes don't usually lead to large differences in course.
Nobody gets confirmed until Trump takes office…
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This, mostly. Don't forget that John Bolton was Trump's National Security Advisor for a time, which is a position of significant influence (but, critically, not determinative).
Trump isn't an isolationist, nor is he a neocon. He's more than willing to have hardliners on the staff, but he will ignore them as much as he ignores that anti-hardliners, which is to say he'll pick whoever's proposal he likes most in the context. Trump isn't ideological enough to be consistent, and while he's willing to go with things that are thought of as 'hardline' (such as the Soleimani killing), he's also been willing to go along with things considered 'weak' (such as the meeting with North Korea's Kim).
Part of Trump's style / implicit offer to his cabinet and significant appointments last time is that he's willing to appoint people whose ambitions / desires are outside the Overton window of the department they oversee, as long as they stand by him / don't start to try and spat with him / his priorities. Trump's appointments, however, are not themselves an endorsement / indication of top-level support for their preferences (i.e. Trump isn't going to fight their bureaucratic battles for them).
What that means is that Rubio and Trump probably have some identified overlapping interests that Rubio wants to do but the current state department momentum isn't. Rubio being a hawk doesn't disqualify him to Trump, because Trump isn't going to defer to Rubio as much as let Rubio do his own thing until Rubio gets involved in a fight with Trump.
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He's not that serious. And he especially doesn't want to do things that will create personal risk for him or his family. He'll happily make friends with neocons that now he has the top status job; so long as they stay loyal to his image. He'll go for the easy wins. The hard wins will be ignored. Constitutionally, I don't think he cares at all about the hard wins. He just sees them as a bad investment.
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