The remaking of Marco Rubio
Perhaps you’ve heard about wearing multiple hats at work, but four? It might be too many for most people, but not Marco Rubio. As the New York Times put it this month, he’s become the “secretary of everything” for the Trump administration: secretary of state, interim national security adviser, acting USAID administrator (albeit for a gutted agency), and acting archivist of the United States at the National Archives and Records Administration.
Put another way, if the Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency asked Rubio what he accomplished this week, it would be a long email. And the former Republican senator from Florida is proving to have better survival instincts in Trump world than some observers expected.
Nahal Toosi, a columnist and senior foreign affairs correspondent at Politico, is one of those Rubio skeptics. She predicted in January that Rubio wouldn’t last long in the second Trump administration, perhaps less than a year. But she’s less sure now, as Rubio emerges from the administration’s first 100 days with a longer list of titles than he began with.
Toosi spoke with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about Rubio’s growing portfolio, how he’s juggling it all, and how he’s accommodated himself to a second Trump administration, including on big issues like immigration and foreign aid. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
How did Marco Rubio become so important at work?
He abandoned everything, or much of, what he........
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