The cupboard of United States President Donald Trump has began to take form, with its first nominee confirmed to a task: Florida lawmaker Marco Rubio.
On Tuesday, Rubio, 53, was sworn in as secretary of state, the nation’s chief diplomat and the highest-ranking function within the cupboard, second solely to the vp and president.
The ceremony got here after a uncommon unanimous vote within the Senate to raise him to the function.
All 99 members voted in favour: The one vote lacking within the 100-seat chamber was Rubio himself, as he needed to step down as senator to take up his new place.
Talking on the swearing-in ceremony, Vice President JD Vance described Rubio as a “wanted departure from a era of failed international coverage”.
“He’s a bipartisan solutions-seeker, a man who can really get issues carried out, however a conservative of nice precept and imaginative and prescient,” Vance stated. “And I feel greater than anyone that I’ve met in Washington over the previous few years, Senator Rubio, I feel, understands the distinctive priorities of President Trump.”
However what has Rubio pledged to do in his new function? And what did Tuesday’s ceremony reveal concerning the newly-minted diplomat? Listed below are three takeaways.
Rubio defends State Division staff
In his first remarks as secretary of state, Rubio praised the federal staff who conduct day-to-day operations on the US Division of State, the manager company he’s now charged with working.
“That is a unprecedented honour and a privilege to serve on this function, to be right here — frankly, to supervise the best, the best, essentially the most gifted, essentially the most skilled diplomatic corps within the historical past of the world,” Rubio stated.
“ I need to additionally thank the regionally employed workers, the nationals of these nations who work with us,” he added. “With out their assist, with out their help, it could be unimaginable for us to conduct our mission.”
Rubio’s remarks come at a delicate time for federal civil servants, as Trump sweeps into workplace with a raft of govt actions designed to rein in authorities paperwork.
Simply in the future earlier, on the primary day of his second time period, Trump threatened to fireplace these staff he perceives as loyal to his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.
“To achieve fast management of the huge federal out-of-control paperwork, I’ll implement a direct regulation freeze, which is able to cease Biden bureaucrats from persevering with to manage,” Trump advised supporters gathered on the Capitol One Area in Washington, DC.
“Most of these bureaucrats are being fired. They’re gone. Must be all of them, however some sneak via.”
In contrast, Rubio entered his new function defending the work of the State Division and praising its staff.
“ There’s no different company on the planet, there’s no different company in our authorities, that I’d relatively lead due to the expertise that’s collected right here on this room and people watching all over the world,” he stated.
Rubio pledges to advance ‘America First’
Nonetheless, Rubio as soon as once more restated his agency dedication to advancing Trump’s “America First” coverage platform, and warned that adjustments would come to the State Division because of this.
“There shall be adjustments, however the adjustments will not be meant to be damaging. They’re not meant to be punitive,” he advised the viewers at his swearing-in, made up largely of State Division staff.
Rubio outlined a imaginative and prescient the place the State Division takes extra of a number one function in authorities affairs.
“Generally, the Division of State has been form of relegated to a secondary function as a result of another company can transfer sooner or appears to be bolder or extra artistic,” Rubio stated.
“It’s not your fault. However we’re going to vary that. We need to be on the centrepiece. We need to be on the core of how we formulate international coverage.”
The previous senator defined that the division’s function transferring ahead could be extra inward-looking, searching for to craft insurance policies that might make the US “stronger or safer or extra affluent”.
He additionally suggested staff to have a look at Trump’s election to a second time period in November as a mandate to centre US priorities.
“Our job, internationally, is to make sure that we’ve got a international coverage that advances the nationwide curiosity of the USA,” he stated, including: “I count on each nation on earth to advance their nationwide pursuits.”
Balancing hawkishness with peace
However regardless of his unifying tone on Tuesday, Rubio confronted protesters as he sat for Senate hearings about his nomination over the previous week.
“Little Marco, hold your fingers off our nation!” one protester shouted, denouncing the US’s involvement in “ceaselessly wars”.
One other, talking Spanish, criticised hardline US insurance policies overseas: “The sanctions of Marco Rubio are killing youngsters in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.”
Rubio brushed apart the interruptions with light-hearted remarks. “I get the bilingual protesters,” the lawmaker, a baby of Cuban immigrants, quipped. He would be the first Latino particular person to function secretary of state.
However the protests had been a reminder of Rubio’s popularity as a foreign-policy hawk, identified for his aggressive stance to US adversaries abroad.
One explicit goal throughout Rubio’s affirmation hearings was China, which has sanctioned the Florida politician for his help of Hong Kong’s autonomy. He advised senators final week that he believed the US-China rivalry would “outline the twenty first century”.
“The Communist Social gathering of China that leads the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is essentially the most potent and harmful near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted,” Rubio stated.
He defined the specter of China dwarfed that of the US’s Chilly Struggle rival, the Soviet Union.
“They’ve components that the Soviet Union by no means possessed. They’re our technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor, an financial competitor, a geopolitical competitor, a scientific competitor now — in each realm.”
Nonetheless, regardless of his hawkish posture, Rubio advised State Division staff on Tuesday that he deliberate to observe via with Trump’s guarantees of delivering world peace.
“That’s what we endeavour to do: to advertise peace all over the world as a result of that’s in our nationwide curiosity,” Rubio stated. “With out peace, it’s laborious to be a robust nation, a affluent nation.”
He did, nonetheless, admit that “there shall be battle”. In explaining how he considered US coverage overseas, he echoed rhetoric common among the many Christian proper: particularly, that the US is based on a non secular mandate.
“We’re, on the finish of the day, a nation based on a strong precept. And that highly effective precept is that each one males are created equal as a result of our rights come from God, our creator — not from our legal guidelines, not from our governments,” Rubio stated.
“We hope the whole world can in the future stay underneath that. And we are going to all the time, all the time be robust defenders of that precept.”