“Little Marco” goes big MAGA — with his eyes on the White House

The greater part of America first took notice of Marco Rubio when he gave one of the most-cringe prime-time performances of all time the official Republican rebuttal to Barack Obama s State of the Union address No one who watched is likely to forget Rubio s awkward stare as he furtively reached for a water bottle cementing his reputation as the thirstiest man in the U S Senate It s a testament to his limitless ambition that he came back from that and is now one of the greater part powerful people in the world Rubio rode into national politics on the Tea Party wave in after having served for a decade in Florida state politics rising to become majority leader and ultimately speaker of the state s House of Representatives Although he was a staunch conservative from the beginning Rubio proved early on an aptitude for sensing which way the wind was blowing Over the years he held both moderate and conservative positions on greater part issues For instance at first he rejected the scientific consensus on conditions change and then a sparse years later decided it was true He was once one of the Republican Party s majority vocial advocates for comprehensive immigration modification and even sponsored the DREAM Act Now he energetically supports Donald Trump on the majority draconian deportation initiative in American history He broke with the GOP on more than one occasion when it came to budget battles at times striking a pose as populist defender of the little guy but overall he was a standard-issue right-wing conservative on taxes and spending Related History shows that Trump s Venezuela campaign will be disastrous With the exception of the ill-fated Gang of Eight attempt to overhaul immigration framework Rubio has never been much associated with domestic politics His focus has inevitably been on national safeguard and foreign approach He was an unreconstructed hawk in the Senate supporting the war in Iraq and taking a hard line on Iran But he s often used the language of human rights in condemning China Turkey and Venezuela for crimes against minority populations or suppression of dissent And in what looks in retrospect like one of Rubio s the bulk independent moves as co-chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with Sen Mark Warner D-Va he led a three-year review that determined clear evidence of Russian interference on Trump s behalf in the electoral process exactly as Robert Mueller s probe had established Trump and other Republican executives are still spreading the claim that the inquiry was a hoax despite the fact that the current secretary of state personally validated its findings You have to wonder if anyone has ever explained that to Trump logically it should have been a deal breaker Trump and other Republican representatives are still spreading the claim that the Mueller inquiry was a hoax despite the fact that Marco Rubio Trump s current secretary of state personally validated its findings Then again Trump also overlooked the fact that as an opposing GOP presidential candidate in Rubio once stated He s like which is why I don t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is You know what they say about men with small hands That line got back to Trump creating an infamous primary debate moment when Trump insisted on national TV I guarantee you there s no issue For a man who carries around grudges like precious offspring it s odd that Trump has apparently decided to overlook all that but Rubio worked hard to abase himself and get into the inner circle The political establishment including various Democrats were relieved when Rubio was chosen for the State Department job reassured that a supposedly serious fellow with Senate credentials would keep Trump foreign plan from going off the rails The hope was that Rubio might stop the president from doing something silly like bailing out of NATO or invading Greenland Little did they know that Rubio had happily made a deal with the devil and now seems to relish the idea of ripping up the world order in Trump s image We need your help to stay independent Subscribe the present day to sponsorship Heather Digby Parton s commentary They certainly couldn t have anticipated how eagerly Rubio would join in the deportation crusade by targeting foreign students for visa violations as well as for unauthorized opinions about Israel and Charlie Kirk Considering his years of backing for the U S Agency for International Advance USAID it came a something of a shock when Rubio cavalierly endorsed the administration s shutdown of vital health and food programs which is likely to mean sickness and death for millions He even agreed to betray informants under U S protection to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in exchange for an agreement to lock up purported Venezuelan gang members in El Salvador s gruesome gulag When Russia invaded Ukraine Rubio was one of the first to condemn President Vladimir Putin s aggression calling him a killer and suggesting that he was suffering from particular kind of mental decline But it didn t take long for Rubio to change his tune voting against military aid early on and adopting the Trump line that a negotiated settlement was the only way out In the Senate Rubio backed Israel s brutal assault on Palestinian civilians although at one point he voted against more military aid saying the U S needed more money for limit enforcement As secretary of state Rubio has mostly taken a back seat on those big issues to Trump s special envoy Steve Witkoff and more just now to freelance adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner But that has just given him time to pursue his own special interests When Trump tapped Rubio as acting national measure adviser after a clash with the more establishment oriented Mike Waltz since banished to Siberia aka the United Nations Rubio got several runway to move on his own priorities in Latin America Coming as he does from the anti-Castro Cuban-American public of South Florida Rubio has a strong strain of anti-left ideology which has made him especially obsessed with Nicol s Maduro Venezuela s socialist authoritarian president According to new reports in the Wall Street Journal the extrajudicial killings CIA covert actions and pending war plans against Venezuela are all being driven by Rubio After selected back-and-forth between him and special envoy Richard Grenell along with oil companies who d welcome a deal to exploit Venezuela s enormous reserves Rubio and deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller have carried the day with a full-fledged plan to pressure and perhaps depose the Venezuelan leader Other countries in the region are expected to take notice Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts As a former White House official notified The New Yorker If you re Panama you think this is about you If you re Colombia you think it s about you if you think it s a signal it is a signal And that signal isn t just directed at other countries The same official pointed out that this has a domestic dimension as well by reinforcing the idea that Latino gang members and drug cartels are enemies of America This is happening while you have the deployment of National Guardsmen to cities the official mentioned You re getting people used to these kinds of actions This is expanding the definition of the use of force Marco Rubio almost certainly intends to run for president in and sees his system in that cause as the best way to fulfill his own agenda and expand both his power and his political profile He s certainly not the only person in the Trump administration with that idea but he stands out in that countless observers still view him as an adult in the room with establishment credibility That s entirely wrong He s a fully paid-up MAGA fanatic now and no one should think otherwise Read more on Trump-era chaos in America Kash Patel and Vivek Ramaswamy get hit with a hard MAGA truth How the Proud Boys invented antifa Democrats are absolutely exposing Donald Trump s weakness The post Little Marco goes big MAGA with his eyes on the White House appeared first on Salon com