The Atlantic magazine recently announced the People’s Choice for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. “Trump Voters Like Marco Rubio More and More (And J.D. Vance Less and Less)” the headline proclaimed, a ruling that deserves respect considering that this is the magazine that has spent the past decade ferociously denouncing Trump as a “racist,” “fascist kleptocrat,” “warped,” “corrupted,” an “authoritarian,” a “demagogue,” a “xenophobe” and a “liar.”
The piece was written by Sarah Longwell, whose career as a Republican consists almost entirely of loathing Trump, calling him an “incomprehensible lunatic,” “an insane madman,” “corrupt” and an “authoritarian.”
So you can take it to the bank: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the choice of everyone who hates Trump with a vitriol so powerful it could melt steel.
Which is to say, the donor class. In the 2016 presidential race, Rubio raised more money from the obscenely rich than any Republican, except Jeb-exclamation point, the donors’ first choice. Like the Atlantic, the donors threw everything they had at Trump – the Russian dossier, massive advertising blitzes, well-funded super-PACs and Fox News (then the only conservative news network). They even tried to change party rules to stop him.
Rubio is a coin slot away from being a jukebox. He would be annoying even if his global meddling worked
In the end, Trump won more Republican primary votes than any candidate in history, then went on to defeat the dragon lady, Hillary Clinton. So if anyone vibrates to the heartbeat of America, it’s the donors.
What’s not to like about Rubio? He’s “diverse.” (The truth is other Hispanics hate Cubans.) His father was a bartender. (Voters don’t care.) His parents fled Fidel Castro – proving his bona fides as an anti-communist! (Except that was a big fat lie: they left years earlier and continued to visit after Castro came to power.)
He claims to have dropped his signature issue – an across-the-board amnesty for illegal aliens – but his record of betrayal on that issue suggests he’ll keep the donor class knee-deep in cheap labor forever. (Yup, he’s John McCain in sheep’s clothing.)
How do the lives of everyday Americans compare to Rubio’s stirring rhetoric about the US “projecting power” around the globe? Surely out-of-work computer programmers would prefer that their government focus like a laser beam on rearranging the Middle East and solving the Ukraine War than ending job-killing trade deals. (Rubio supports them.)
Half-brights are bowled over by Rubio’s smooth-as-silk press briefings, with heartfelt passages about the greatness of America and the perfidy of Iran. The pauses, smirks, intonations and hand gestures are perfect.
His speeches better be good. He’s practiced them enough. Rubio never, ever says anything that is not a pre-recorded little speech – including launching into the exact same riff four times at the 2016 Republican debate in New Hampshire. To wit: “Let’s dispel this notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country.” Each time said with feeling.
Rubio is just a coin slot away from being a jukebox.
He would be annoying enough if all his global meddling turned out great. But every single time, his ideas for slinging American power around the globe end in utter catastrophe. The Iran war, opposed by 60 percent of Americans, is only the latest example.
In 2011, Rubio had just landed in the Senate, representing the state of Florida – not to be confused with the “Libyan National Liberation Army.” His first major political act was to write a letter to his Senate colleagues, urging Congress to authorize US military action explicitly aimed at removing Muammar Gaddafi. “The world is a better place when America is willing to lead,” he said. (Stirring!)
Actually, Libya was already a better place in 2011 because of the Iraq War. After President Bush attacked Iraq, Gaddafi was terrified that he’d be next and promptly agreed to dismantle his nuclear and chemical warfare programs and allow international weapons inspectors unconditional access. He also paid billions of dollars to the victims of previous Libyan terrorist attacks.
That was in 2003. But in 2011, the regime was still not to Rubio’s liking. Gaddafi was mean to his own people. America must act!
It turned out that another geopolitical genius, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, agreed with Rubio. She orchestrated a no-fly zone, air strikes and targeted bombings to destroy Gaddafi’s armed forces. The attack ended with Rubio-backed “opposition forces” sodomizing, bayoneting and murdering Gaddafi in a frenzied attack in the desert – all captured on videotape by the perpetrators. Did Rubio think we were going to get George Washington?
As a direct result of the intervention in Libya, the world became a much, much worse place. When he was alive, Gaddafi made a deal with Europeans: in exchange for billions of dollars, he offered to hold back the millions of “starving and ignorant Africans” clambering to get into Europe.
As soon he was gone, the floodgates opened. Sweden went from a country where rape and gun violence were virtually nonexistent to the rape and gun-crime capital of Europe. Countries like Norway, Germany and Denmark were forced to hold classes teaching refugees not to rape European girls. (“To force someone into sex is not permitted in Norway.”)
The rape rate increased 350 percent in the UK, 300 percent in France and more than 150 percent across the EU. Social welfare programs are collapsing under the weight of the freeloading refugees, anti-Semitic attacks have gone through the roof, Jews are fleeing France and Europe is about to become the next caliphate. As Gaddafi put it, now we shall see whether “Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.”
But at least he isn’t oppressing his people anymore. Nice job, Marco!
In 2015, Rubio pushed for the US to establish no-fly zones in Syria and provide arms to opposition forces against President Bashar al-Assad, a secular leader who didn’t join al-Qaeda or dress like a clown. Inasmuch as Russian planes were flying over Syria in defense of Assad, a no-fly zone would have risked starting World War Three.
Asked by CNBC’s John Harwood if “the prospect of potential military, hot military conflict with Russia would scare the American people,” Rubio replied: “Sure, but the consequences of not doing anything would scare them even more.” Has this guy ever met an actual American?
In 2024, Rubio finally got his wish, when Syrian opposition forces overthrew Assad. The bright, shiny new president is a kufi-wearing terrorist, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who fought with al-Qaeda against the US in Iraq. So far, he’s committed far worse atrocities than Assad ever dreamed of, including massacres, abusing minorities and carrying out a wave of revenge killings. But now he’s president, so the US took him off the terrorist list.
Rubio has been gassing on about the Iranian threat since he first entered Congress, warning in 2011 that Iranian nukes could soon hit the east coast of the United States.
His fear was only redoubled when Obama struck a deal with Iran, lifting sanctions in return for Iran granting access to international weapons inspectors. The deal, Rubio predicted, would lead to Iran making long-range missiles “capable of reaching the United States.”
Again, in the run-up to the current war, he declared that Iran has weapons “solely designed to attack America and attack Americans.” Maybe someone should give Marco one of those weighted dog blankets to calm him down.
New York is still standing. At some point, obsessing over the never-materialized threat of Iran bombing a US city is like worrying about getting cancer from a pack of cigarettes you smoked 15 years ago.
Ironically, now that the war has failed to bring about any of its stated objectives, the best possible outcome for the US would be a return to the Obama deal.
He imagines himself striding across continents as a global chess player when he’s an intellectual lightweight
With not much else to show for the war, Rubio has been reduced to claiming America’s attack on Iran was a “favor” to the world. Why? Because Iran “cannot be allowed to dictate who uses this vital waterway” – the Strait of Hormuz. But the sole reason the strait is closed is that we bombed them.
Worse, the attack exposed the dirty little secret that the only way for a country to prevent America from bombing it is to already have a nuke – see North Korea, China and Pakistan. When the next tin-pot dictatorship announces that it’s a nuclear power, thank gung-ho warmongers like Rubio.
He imagines himself striding across continents as a global chess player, when, in fact, he’s an intellectual lightweight whose educational background compares unfavorably to Representative Jasmine Crockett’s.
But to donors, Rubio sounds like a foreign policy whiz with his passionate speeches about the al-Nusra Front, the Houthis, the Uighurs, and other issues of absolutely no interest to 99.99 percent of Americans .Luckily for Rubio, that stuff is catnip to politically-retarded billionaires. They don’t worry any more than he does about ordinary Americans’ concerns, such as the price of gas, food and housing; H-1B visa holders grabbing all the tech jobs; their daughters being raped and killed by foreigners dumped on the country; or the unending race discrimination in this country against white Americans.
What’s especially impressive about the carnival of idiots supporting Rubio right now is that, with the exception of his getting trounced by Trump in his own state’s primary in 2016, his star has never been so bedraggled. Between practicing his speeches and plotting to remake Latin America, Rubio was front and center as the public face of the vastly unpopular war that has already reversed Trump’s economic gains, driven up inflation and cratered the President’s public approval ratings. Nice job, Marco!
They’d be better off trying to bring back Jeb.
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