Rubio’s authority as US Secretary of State threatened even before Trump term begins

WASHINGTON – Senator Marco Rubio is Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of State, but in the weeks running up to Inauguration Day, the President-elect’s special envoys have been getting most of the attention.

Trump summoned Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff at a press conference last week to report on his push to get an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal.

Mr Keith Kellogg, tapped to handle ties with Ukraine and Russia, has made frequent television appearances and pledged a visit to Kyiv – and possibly Moscow – very soon. 

Both long-time Trump advisers and friends, the men are among a group of appointees with close access to the President-elect.

They have already gotten to work, while Mr Rubio has been forced to keep silent as he awaits a Senate confirmation hearing on Jan 15 to be Trump’s top diplomat. 

The dynamic underscores the challenges Mr Rubio, who drew withering attacks from Trump and his allies when he ran against him in 2016, would face to his authority as the new administration’s leading voice on foreign policy.

It is an awkward position for the Florida lawmaker, who served on the Senate’s foreign relations and intelligence committees and has been greeted by colleagues as one of the most qualified of the President-elect’s Cabinet picks.

“Substantive foreign policy experts like Senator Rubio are less likely to be influential with the president than business voices,” said Ms Kori Schake, a former US official who is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 

“It’s unlikely he will be the dominant force on foreign policy in a Trump administration just because I don’t think Trump will permit anyone but Trump to be the dominant voice,” she said. 

The incoming president has already named a string of special envoys, not all of whom require Senate confirmation, as well as numerous ambassadors, who do.

Many are Trump’s friends, political donors or members of his extended family. Others close to him also have strong views on foreign policy, from billionaire Elon Musk to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Mr Rubio may even face frictions with his own State Department spokeswoman.

Trump’s pick for the job, Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce, once called Mr Rubio an “inexperienced senator who’s never run a thing in his life” and compared him to “the kid waving frantically in the back of room trying to prove relevance”.

Mr Rubio has not spoken publicly about the matter.

Trump has a longstanding relationship with Mr Rubio and values his foreign policy insights, particularly on Latin America, according to Mr Dan Holler, a spokesman for Mr Rubio.

The nominee also has close ties to the incoming national security adviser, Mr Mike Waltz, his colleague in the Florida congressional delegation, he said.

“President Trump has an ambitious foreign policy agenda that will put Americans first and correct the failures of the past four years,” Mr Holler said in a statement. “No one dedicated to carrying out the president’s historic mandate has time for silly games or gossip.” 

While presidential envoys and politically appointed ambassadors are nothing new, the sheer number of officials from Trump’s close social orbit being named so early has come as a surprise.

Some observers say that is not necessarily a bad thing.

“We could talk about the qualifications or lack thereof of any individual person,” said Mr Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Centre for a New American Security in Washington.

“But having been in Washington for the first Trump transition, where they took literally forever to put people into place, the speed with which they’re moving now seems welcome.”

Still, Mr Rubio’s challenge will be especially acute given the way foreign policy played out in Trump’s first term.

Insiders including one-time National Security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo clashed openly.

US ambassadors often just called Trump to get his direction. 

Envoys aside, bigger questions hover over Mr Rubio’s chances to succeed in the role.

He has voiced unstinting support for Ukraine and has not publicly budged from his opposition to the TikTok video-sharing app, even as Trump has warned to it.

He has not yet commented on Trump’s suggestion that the US absorb Canada into its territory, though he once said the country has “a long history of standing by America in good times and bad”.

Asked by Punchbowl News what he thought of Trump’s decision to oppose a ban on TikTok, a move Mr Rubio has supported, the senator responded: “If I’m confirmed as Secretary of State, I’ll work for the president.”

There are also some who believe Mr Rubio – who has sparred with Trump in the past and once insulted his “small hands” – may not last long in the role.

Trump once called him a “total lightweight who I wouldn’t hire to run one of my smaller companies”.

Normally, the White House would wait for State Department recommendations before choosing envoys and ambassadors.

But Trump “is not going to spend an awful lot of time caring about what the State Department thinks about an issue”, according to Mr Gerald Feierstein, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a 41-year veteran of the US foreign service. 

“Rubio is going to be pretty much on the margins, if anything, of policy-making on the foreign policy side,” Mr Feierstein said. “Someday, he’s going to see a tweet that he has been fired and that’s going to be end of that.” BLOOMBERG