He is part of a group of extreme right-wing hawks devoid of ethics set to run Trump’s foreign policy team
President-elect Donald Trump named Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for Secretary of State, an abhorrent choice that shows Trump’s claim to be a peace candidate to be a complete illusion.
The New York Times reported that, since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio has “staked out a position as a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba in particular.”
Supportive of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, 2011 U.S. bombing of Libya and genocidal U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen, Rubio has further expressed unalloyed support for Israel’s war in Gaza, claiming that Hamas was to blame for Palestinian civilian deaths.
The New York Times emphasized that Rubio has been among the most outspoken senators on the need for the U.S. to be more aggressive on China.
While sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he demanded that the Biden administration block sales to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, after it released an artificial intelligence processor chip-powered laptop.
Sanctioned by the Chinese government for supporting an anti-Chinese uprising in Hong Kong, Rubio introduced the “Taiwan Peace Through Strength Act” that would fast-track U.S.-Taiwan military coordination, and has called for Taiwan to increase its defense spending, which is not a majority view in Taiwan.
Zhu Junwei, a former researcher in the People’s Liberation Army and director of American research at Beijing’s Grandview Institution think tank, told the Australian Financial Review that Rubio’s appointment would “be a nightmare coming true.”
Rubio’s selection is also a nightmare for Cubans, given his stature as a leader of Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban expat community.
Falsely claiming that the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime has served as a puppet for Communist China, Iran, and most recently Russia, Rubio’s overriding priority as Secretary of State will be to achieve Washington’s long-standing goal of overthrowing Cuba’s socialist government by expanding on an already crushing embargo, and by supporting dissident movements through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other State Department-linked agencies.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio asserted on the campaign trail that his family came to the U.S. to escape persecution by Fidel Castro’s government. However, a review of government immigration records revealed that Rubio’s parents actually came to Miami in 1956 in order to escape persecution by U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista whom Castro overthrew.
Rubio’s grandfather Pedro Victor Garcia went back to Cuba after the Cuban Revolution to take a job in the Cuban Treasury Ministry, though later had a falling out with the Castro regime.
During Rubio’s 2016 presidential run, The New York Times quoted from a Havana resident living on the street where Rubio’s father grew up who gave Rubio a vigorous thumbs down when asked about him. Héctor Montiel, 66, said that, “if Marco Rubio becomes president, we’re done for. He’s against Cuba in every possible way….Rubio and these Republicans, they are still stuck in 1959.” Echoing similar sentiments, Alain Marcelo, 46, told The New York Times: “He [Rubio] wants to kill us!…Viva Fidel. Rubio’s our enemy!”
Born in 1971, Rubio was an indifferent student who played football at Tarkio College in Missouri before earning degrees from the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law.
Rubio’s dishonesty was evident when he claimed to be unaware of his brother-in-law Orlando Cicilia’s direction of a $75 million cocaine smuggling ring from his home in West Kendall, Florida, in the 1980s where Rubio lived as a teenager.
