Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a onetime G.O.P. golden boy, burst onto the national political scene over a decade ago with an expansive vision for his party in which he — the son of a bartender and a maid, both Cuban immigrants — could reach the pinnacle of power in the United States.
Now Mr. Rubio appears on the brink of being picked by president-elect Donald J. Trump to be secretary of state, an appointment that would make him the first Latino to hold the position. He would serve a president who has made demonizing immigrants a defining feature of his political message.
Mr. Rubio was a finalist to serve as Mr. Trump’s running mate. If he is selected to serve as secretary of state, the top foreign policy role will be a test of whether the senator, who has reinvented himself repeatedly during his political ascent, can help bring stability to a world stage where leaders are bracing for four years of unpredictable foreign policy and “America First” protectionism.
Rubio ran against Trump in 2016 and viciously criticized him.
During his failed 2016 presidential bid, Mr. Rubio was Exhibit A in how the schoolyard taunts that worked for Mr. Trump only served to mortify other politicians who tried to mimic his style.
“He doesn’t sweat because his pores are clogged from the spray tan he uses,” Mr. Rubio said of Mr. Trump at a campaign rally in Salem, Va, in February 2016. “He’s like 6’2”, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2”, Mr. Rubio continued. “Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands.”
He added, after a pause: “You can’t trust ‘em!”
“I will never give up the fight to ensure that the party of Reagan remains a conservative party,” Mr. Rubio said on Fox News around the same time, adding, “not one headed up by a con man.”
Mr. Trump belittled him with the nickname “Little Marco” and attacked him for having “no money.”
Like many Republicans who criticized Mr. Trump back then, Mr. Rubio has worked overtime to smooth over past disagreements. During the first Trump administration, he strengthened his relationship with the president by advising him on Latin American issues.
During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Rubio served as a behind-the-scenes foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump and helped him prepare for his first debate against President Biden. Even after he was passed over for vice president, Mr. Rubio remained a staunch surrogate on the campaign trail for the Trump-Vance ticket.
He is not known as a policy heavyweight in the Senate.
Mr. Rubio’s one major foray into bipartisan deal making came in 2013, when he served as the lead Republican in the so-called Gang of Eight, a group hammering out a complicated bipartisan immigration bill that would have granted a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. Mr. Rubio ultimately abandoned his own legislation, which failed to pass the House, in the face of backlash from the party’s grass roots.
In the Senate, he serves on the Foreign Relations Committee and as the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, where he has demanded that the Biden administration block sales to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, after it released an AI processor chip-powered laptop.
Mr. Rubio has been better known as a political climber than a legislator. A three-term senator, he is not known for leading any other major legislation in Congress after the failed push for immigration reform. In 2016, he opposed same-sex marriage and in 2022 he dismissed legislation the Senate passed to codify the right to same-sex marriage as a “stupid waste of time.”
He is a hawk but has turned against more funding for Ukraine.
Mr. Rubio has long staked out a hawkish foreign policy approach, sometimes contrasting with Mr. Trump’s “America First” stances.
He cosponsored legislation last year that would bar any president from removing the United States from NATO without congressional approval, a measure that was seen as a precaution should Mr. Trump win the presidency and follow through with his frequent threats to abandon the alliance.
Mr. Rubio has pressed for a more confrontational approach to Beijing, warning that China’s Communist rulers are adversaries who aim to “rise at the expense of the United States.”
He introduced legislation to block tax credits for electric vehicle batteries produced using Chinese technology and was sanctioned by the Chinese government in 2020, along with five other U.S. lawmakers, for “behaving badly on Hong Kong-related issues.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Mr. Rubio quickly supported the Biden administration’s push to send billions of dollars and heavy arms to Kyiv. But he has since shifted his stance, voting in April against a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine and arguing that Kyiv needed to negotiate a settlement with Russia to end the war.
“I’m not on Russia’s side — but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” he said on NBC earlier this year.
He has shifted with his party on immigration issues.
Mr. Rubio began climbing the political ladder in 1998, the same year he was married to Jeanette Dousdebes, a Miami Dolphins cheerleader and the child of Colombian immigrants. He was 26 and was elected to the five-seat city commission in West Miami. The smooth-talking, boyish-looking, Spanish-speaking Mr. Rubio was then elected to the state legislature in 2000, where he supported a bill that would allow undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition.
When he rose to become the speaker of the Florida statehouse in 2006, he opposed Republican efforts to crack down on undocumented immigrants.
But in 2010, when he mounted his first campaign for Senate, he positioned himself as a hard-line immigration hawk.
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