"Step one: praise the boss, effusively, as a hero. (A sample post from Rubio's X account: "Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before.") Step two: explain that whatever unprecedented thing the President has just done-capturing the head of state of another country in the middle of the night, promising to take control of Greenland -is, in fact, entirely normal."
"And yet, by comparison, Rubio seems less like a foreign-policy adviser and more "like a support staffer for the President," Filkins writes. "Ultimately, he has to be a hundred per cent loyal to the President, and when the President zigs and zags Rubio has to zig and zag, too," one former Western diplomat who's worked with Rubio said. "He's had to swallow a lot of shit.""
Marco Rubio follows a two-step routine of effusively praising the President and then normalizing unprecedented presidential actions. His combined roles as Secretary of State and national-security adviser would place him among the most powerful American diplomats, yet his conduct aligns more with a presidential support staffer than an independent adviser. Rubio shows ideological malleability and adapts to abrupt policy shifts, implementing the President's draconian impulses. He oversaw significant cuts to U.S.A.I.D. despite previously lobbying for higher funding. His political evolution from Florida state politics and a failed 2016 presidential campaign has generated deep alienation within the foreign-policy community.
Read at The New Yorker
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