Rubio in Dual Nat'l Security Roles     05/02 06:29

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been thrown into two 
top national security jobs at once as President Donald Trump presses forward 
with his top-to-bottom revamp of U.S. foreign policy, upending not only 
longstanding policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also 
the configuration of the executive branch.

   Trump's appointment of Rubio to temporarily replace Mike Waltz as national 
security adviser is the first major leadership shake-up of the nascent 
administration, but Waltz's removal had been rumored for weeks -- ever since he 
created a Signal group chat and accidentally added a journalist to the 
conversation where top national security officials shared sensitive military 
plans.

   So, just over 100 days into his tenure as America's top diplomat, Rubio now 
becomes just the second person to hold both positions. He follows only the late 
Henry Kissinger, who served as both secretary of state and national security 
adviser for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 
1970s.

   Rubio -- a one-time Trump rival and hawkish conservative who was derided by 
the president as "Little Marco" during the 2016 presidential campaign -- has 
proven adept at aligning himself with Trump's "America First" foreign policy 
positions. Rubio has largely eschewed his staunch advocacy of providing foreign 
aid and promoting democracy overseas since taking over the State Department, 
repeating a refrain that every policy or program should make America safer, 
stronger or more prosperous.

   Rubio leads during Trump's massive changes

   Since being confirmed in a 99-0 Senate floor vote, Rubio has presided over a 
radical reorganization of the State Department. That includes the dismantling 
of the U.S. Agency for International Development and plans to cut U.S. jobs by 
15% while closing or consolidating more than 100 bureaus worldwide. He has also 
begun a major cull of the visa system, revoking hundreds, if not thousands, of 
visas issued to foreign students.

   He has overseen the negotiation of agreements to send immigrants accused of 
crimes to third countries, most notably to El Salvador, in cases that are now 
being challenged in federal courts.

   "Marco Rubio, unbelievable," Trump said Thursday before announcing on social 
media that Waltz would be nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and 
Rubio would take over as national security adviser in the interim. "When I have 
a problem, I call up Marco, he gets it solved."

   That's a far cry from 2016, when Rubio and Trump were competing for the GOP 
presidential nomination and Rubio warned that Trump was a threat. After Trump 
won, the relationship remained contentious, but eight years later, Rubio was an 
enthusiastic Trump supporter who worked his Florida bona fides to get into the 
president's inner circle.

   Yet, even after Rubio was nominated to the top diplomatic job, doubts 
remained. Many pundits suggested he would last only a short time in office 
before Trump dismissed him in the same way he did his first-term secretary of 
state, Rex Tillerson, who was fired by tweet in 2018 just 18 months into the 
job.

   Yet Rubio has been resilient. And as of Thursday, he oversees both the State 
Department and the National Security Council, which is responsible for 
coordinating all executive branch foreign policy functions, ranging from 
diplomatic to military and intelligence operations.

   Thomas Wright, an NSC official during the Biden administration who is now a 
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the national security adviser 
post alone is "more than a full-time job."

   "It is just very hard to comprehend the idea that you can do this job sort 
of part time," Wright said.

   He said he watched national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy 
work 14-15 hour days, six to seven days a week: "I think they felt that they 
had to do that to do the job properly."

   Rubio says little so far on his additional role

   Appearing Thursday night on Fox News Channel's "Hannity," Rubio was not 
asked to weigh in on the president's decision to tap him as national security 
adviser but did joke that he was barred from adding pope to his list of many 
jobs because he is married.

   But as he marked the first 100 days of Trump's latest term, Rubio applauded 
the president for his vision.

   "I am honored by the trust President Trump placed in me and I am proud of 
the work the Department of State has done over the past hundred days to 
implement his agenda and put the American people first," he wrote Wednesday in 
a State Department Substack post.

   One of Rubio's former Florida statehouse colleagues, Dan Gelber, a Democrat, 
said of Rubio's increasing responsibilities that "Marco is probably, to a 
certain extent, one of the more reliable Cabinet officers, if not the most 
reliable."

   "And I can only believe those qualities are even more vital to his current 
confluence of positions and growing portfolio," Gelber said. "He's not a chaos 
guy, and I've always sort of wondered how he's going to do in an administration 
where there seems to be so much chaos. And maybe that's why he's getting all 
these positions."

   Rubio's dual-hatted role comes on top of him serving as acting administrator 
of the largely shut down USAID and as acting head of the National Archives. It 
puts him in a similar position to that of Trump's longtime personal friend and 
golfing buddy Steve Witkoff.

   As a special envoy, Witkoff is the lead U.S. negotiator in the Iran nuclear 
talks and in administration peace efforts for the Israel-Hamas war and the 
Ukraine-Russia war.

   In many ways, Rubio and Witkoff are following in the footsteps of Trump's 
son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had multiple roles in the first administration, 
ranging from the Middle East to Latin America and immigration.

   How Rubio's expanded duties are seen at the State Department

   State Department officials appeared taken aback by Trump's appointment of 
Rubio as acting national security adviser. Spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said at a 
briefing Thursday that she learned the news from a journalist who asked her a 
question about Trump's post minutes after it appeared on social media.

   Officials, however, have noted that Rubio in recent weeks has spent an 
increasingly large amount of time at the White House away from his posh 
seventh-floor State Department office in what is known as "Mahogany Row," a 
corridor known for its wood paneling.

   At the same time, these officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to 
discuss the personnel shift, said they did not expect Rubio's duties as 
secretary of state to change significantly. He still plans to travel on 
diplomatic missions abroad and likely will delegate at least some of the NSC 
management to others, they said.