Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy

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🗓️ 7 March 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

It's been a little more than a week since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

Vice President JD Vance was in the meeting too. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, sat on an Oval Office couch, mostly silent, as Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader.

Along the way, the president and vice president made it clear just how much of the established global order they are ready to upend. An order that for most of his career, Rubio has defended, and worked to help hold up.

So what changed ...and what do those changes mean?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's no secret that much, if not most, of the Republican Party is in lockstep with President Trump.
0:07.0	The golden age of America has only just begun.
0:12.1	It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.
0:16.9	Thank you. God bless you.
0:18.6	And God bless America.
0:21.0	We have seen members of the president's Party fall in line over and over on a wide range of issues since Trump returned to office some six weeks ago.
0:29.3	Sometimes that has meant compromising on issues and beliefs that had defined them for years.
0:34.1	Hi, Mr. Cassidy. Mr. Cassidy. Hi. Mr. Langford.
0:37.4	That was Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who had expressed concerns about vaccine
0:43.0	resistance, voting for Trump's pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services,
0:47.6	Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
0:49.3	Kennedy has a long history of opposition to vaccines and chaired an anti-vaccine nonprofit called
0:55.0	Children's Health Defense. Here's Iowa Senator and military veteran Joni Ernst who has spent
0:59.6	years advocating for women in the military and trying to raise awareness about sexual assault
1:04.7	in the military. I think for a number of our senators, they want to make sure that any
1:10.4	allegations have been cleared,
1:12.7	and that's why we have to have a very thorough vetting process. Ernst was talking about
1:18.5	Trump's pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegeseth. Hegeseth has been accused of sexual assault.
1:23.9	His lawyer has called the claims false, and police never filed charges. And before he was nominated,
1:29.6	Hexeth had argued against women in combat. He talked about it in a podcast hosted by Sean Ryan in
1:35.2	November. Because I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us
1:40.7	more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.
	...

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