President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly set to pick Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his secretary of state — a decision that would make the Cuban American senator the first Latino to serve as the nation’s top diplomat.
Rubio’s expected appointment was first reported by the New York Times on Monday.
Trump, 78, could still change his mind on his pick to lead the State Department, the outlet noted, but “appeared to have settled” on Rubio.
“Nothing has been confirmed,” a source familiar with the situation told The Post.
Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles, has represented Florida in the US Senate since 2011. He serves as vice chairman on the Senate Intelligence Committee and is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He was reportedly among the finalists to be Trump’s running mate before the president-elect tapped Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) at the start of the Republican National Convention in July.
The 53-year-old Florida Republican has long warned of the threat posed to the country by its foreign adversaries, including China and Iran.
A month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Rubio cautioned that the People’s Republic of China is “an even more powerful adversary” than Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army, urging the country to not “devote the entirety of our attention to a single geopolitical challenge.”
Rubio — like Trump’s national security adviser pick, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) — has argued that the US must “revitalize our industrial capacity” in order to “prevail” against the Chinese Communist Party.
He has also warned that China flooding the market with high-tech goods, such as electric vehicles, is “far from accidental,” part of a CCP “plan to dominate global trade in vital industrial inputs and high-value goods.”
“This threatens countless non-Chinese companies — and the working families who rely on them — in countries across the world … It also threatens the national security of the United States,” Rubio wrote in September in an op-ed for The Post.
On Iran, Rubio called for the reimposition of a “maximum pressure campaign” against the regime in the aftermath of the Oct. 1 missile attack against Israel.
“Iran’s brutal missile attack on Israeli civilians reinforces what we have always known: the terrorist Iranian regime seeks to dominate the Middle East through death, chaos, and ultimately the complete destruction of Israel,” he said at the time. “This regime can no longer be appeased.”
Rubio, who made several stops on the 2024 campaign trail with Trump after running against him in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, has signaled support for the president-elect’s plan to pursue peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
“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,” the senator said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month. “And I want, and we want, and, I believe Donald Trump wants, for Ukraine to have more leverage in that negotiation.”
Ric Grenell, the former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, was in discussions for the secretary of state position as well.
The Post has reached out to Rubio’s office and Trump’s transition team for comment.
