Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of State, on Wednesday vowed that the “top priority” of U.S. foreign policy “will be the United States” as he outlined his life story and his goals if confirmed to be America’s top diplomat.
In his remarks before his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio outlined that under Trump and him, the State Department will put forward policies that make America “more prosperous” and avoid past mistakes where “America far too often continued to prioritize the “global order” above our core national interests.”
Rubio, who remains in the Senate until he is confirmed, received a chummy and friendly response from the foreign policy panel. Both the top Republican, Chair Jim Risch of Idaho, and top Democrat, Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, agreed that Rubio is qualified to hold the job and offered praise and positive stories of their working experiences with him. Risch also cracked jokes at the outset of the hearing.
Yet Rubio also faced early hecklers. Anti-war protesters decried him as a supporter of “forever wars.” Liberal protesters associated with the activist group Code Pink yelled “education is a human right” and castigated him for supporting sanctions on the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
In response to a Spanish-language protest accusing him of “killing the children of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba,” Rubio quipped “I get bilingual protests.”
