How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
Is this competence or optics?
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How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
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/ March 10, 2026
How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
Rubio’s transformation may say as much about neoconservatism as it does about the man himself.
Matthew Duss
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Rubio first? Donald Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, gives the thumbs up.(Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Shapeshifter.”
Afew days after Donald Trump was reelected, I traveled to Berlin for a series of meetings with political analysts and Bundestag members about the implications of the US election. I joked that I was there to assist in their grief therapy. Not only were they in shock about Trump’s return to power, but their own governing coalition was also in the process of collapsing.
Amid the general despair, I was struck by how many of them had latched on to Marco Rubio’s just-announced nomination for secretary of state as a source of hope. Rubio may be a right-wing conservative, they offered, but he believes in the sort of internationalism we all believe in, doesn’t he? He comes to the Munich Security Conference. He’s part of the Serious Foreign-Policy Club, right?
Abandon hope, I told them. Rubio’s nomination isn’t a sign that Trump might be a normal president; it’s a sign of how effectively Rubio has been housebroken.
The hope that Rubio would bring some sanity to a second Trump administration wasn’t limited to the conference hotels of Europe, of course. Rubio was confirmed unanimously by the Senate after sailing smoothly through his hearings. This is partly explained by the body’s notorious clubbiness and the fact that, as one of Trump’s earliest nominees, he benefited from the “honeymoon” period that all new presidents get. But Rubio also got a boost from the belief that he would be “the adult in the room.”
That hope has largely been demolished. Far from being a savior of the “rules-based order,” Rubio has established himself as one of the second Trump administration’s most consequential cabinet secretaries, skillfully serving as MAGA’s face on the global stage.
His recent address at the 2026 Munich Security Conference, which I attended, was a perfect showcase of Rubio’s new, Trumpier approach. A year after Vice President JD Vance’s right-wing populist harangue at the conference—in which he warned that the greatest danger facing Europe was “the threat from within”—Rubio offered merely a kinder, gentler version of that rant. He spoke of the “old friendship” between the United States and Europe and declared, “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could …
Is this competence or optics?
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How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
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Current Issue
Feature
/ March 10, 2026
How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
Rubio’s transformation may say as much about neoconservatism as it does about the man himself.
Matthew Duss
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Rubio first? Donald Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, gives the thumbs up.(Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Shapeshifter.”
Afew days after Donald Trump was reelected, I traveled to Berlin for a series of meetings with political analysts and Bundestag members about the implications of the US election. I joked that I was there to assist in their grief therapy. Not only were they in shock about Trump’s return to power, but their own governing coalition was also in the process of collapsing.
Amid the general despair, I was struck by how many of them had latched on to Marco Rubio’s just-announced nomination for secretary of state as a source of hope. Rubio may be a right-wing conservative, they offered, but he believes in the sort of internationalism we all believe in, doesn’t he? He comes to the Munich Security Conference. He’s part of the Serious Foreign-Policy Club, right?
Abandon hope, I told them. Rubio’s nomination isn’t a sign that Trump might be a normal president; it’s a sign of how effectively Rubio has been housebroken.
The hope that Rubio would bring some sanity to a second Trump administration wasn’t limited to the conference hotels of Europe, of course. Rubio was confirmed unanimously by the Senate after sailing smoothly through his hearings. This is partly explained by the body’s notorious clubbiness and the fact that, as one of Trump’s earliest nominees, he benefited from the “honeymoon” period that all new presidents get. But Rubio also got a boost from the belief that he would be “the adult in the room.”
That hope has largely been demolished. Far from being a savior of the “rules-based order,” Rubio has established himself as one of the second Trump administration’s most consequential cabinet secretaries, skillfully serving as MAGA’s face on the global stage.
His recent address at the 2026 Munich Security Conference, which I attended, was a perfect showcase of Rubio’s new, Trumpier approach. A year after Vice President JD Vance’s right-wing populist harangue at the conference—in which he warned that the greatest danger facing Europe was “the threat from within”—Rubio offered merely a kinder, gentler version of that rant. He spoke of the “old friendship” between the United States and Europe and declared, “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could …
How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
Is this competence or optics?
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How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
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Current Issue
Feature
/ March 10, 2026
How Marco Rubio Went From Neocon “It” Boy to Top MAGA Lieutenant
Rubio’s transformation may say as much about neoconservatism as it does about the man himself.
Matthew Duss
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Rubio first? Donald Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, gives the thumbs up.(Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images)
This article appears in the
April 2026 issue, with the headline “Shapeshifter.”
Afew days after Donald Trump was reelected, I traveled to Berlin for a series of meetings with political analysts and Bundestag members about the implications of the US election. I joked that I was there to assist in their grief therapy. Not only were they in shock about Trump’s return to power, but their own governing coalition was also in the process of collapsing.
Amid the general despair, I was struck by how many of them had latched on to Marco Rubio’s just-announced nomination for secretary of state as a source of hope. Rubio may be a right-wing conservative, they offered, but he believes in the sort of internationalism we all believe in, doesn’t he? He comes to the Munich Security Conference. He’s part of the Serious Foreign-Policy Club, right?
Abandon hope, I told them. Rubio’s nomination isn’t a sign that Trump might be a normal president; it’s a sign of how effectively Rubio has been housebroken.
The hope that Rubio would bring some sanity to a second Trump administration wasn’t limited to the conference hotels of Europe, of course. Rubio was confirmed unanimously by the Senate after sailing smoothly through his hearings. This is partly explained by the body’s notorious clubbiness and the fact that, as one of Trump’s earliest nominees, he benefited from the “honeymoon” period that all new presidents get. But Rubio also got a boost from the belief that he would be “the adult in the room.”
That hope has largely been demolished. Far from being a savior of the “rules-based order,” Rubio has established himself as one of the second Trump administration’s most consequential cabinet secretaries, skillfully serving as MAGA’s face on the global stage.
His recent address at the 2026 Munich Security Conference, which I attended, was a perfect showcase of Rubio’s new, Trumpier approach. A year after Vice President JD Vance’s right-wing populist harangue at the conference—in which he warned that the greatest danger facing Europe was “the threat from within”—Rubio offered merely a kinder, gentler version of that rant. He spoke of the “old friendship” between the United States and Europe and declared, “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could …
