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"Little Marco" goes big MAGA -- with his eyes on the White House
“Little Marco” goes big MAGA — with his eyes on the White House
Once a Trump tormentor, Marco Rubio is now a MAGA powerhouse — and driving the illegal war on Venezuela
By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published October 23, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)
(Salon) Most of America first took notice of Marco Rubio when he gave one of the most-cringe prime-time performances of all time, the official Republican rebuttal to Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address. No one who watched is likely to forget Rubio’s awkward stare as he furtively reached for a water bottle, cementing his reputation as the thirstiest man in the U.S. Senate. It’s a testament to his limitless ambition that he came back from that and is now one of the most powerful people in the world.
Rubio rode into national politics on the Tea Party wave in 2010, after having served for a decade in Florida state politics, rising to become majority leader and ultimately speaker of the state’s House of Representatives. Although he was a staunch conservative from the beginning, Rubio showed early on an aptitude for sensing which way the wind was blowing. Over the years he held both moderate and conservative positions on most issues. For instance, at first he rejected the scientific consensus on climate change and then, a few years later, decided it was true. He was once one of the Republican Party’s most vocial advocates for comprehensive immigration reform and even sponsored the DREAM Act. Now he energetically supports Donald Trump on the most draconian deportation program in American history. He broke with the GOP on more than one occasion when it came to budget battles, at times striking a pose as populist defender of the little guy, but overall he was a standard-issue right-wing conservative on taxes and spending.
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The political establishment, including many Democrats, were relieved when Rubio was chosen for the State Department job, reassured that a supposedly serious fellow with Senate credentials would keep Trump foreign policy from going off the rails. The hope was that Rubio might stop the president from doing something silly, like bailing out of NATO or invading Greenland. Little did they know that Rubio had happily made a deal with the devil and now seems to relish the idea of ripping up the world order in Trump’s image.
....(snip)....
According to recent reports in the Wall Street Journal, the extrajudicial killings, CIA covert actions and pending war plans against Venezuela are all being driven by Rubio. After some back-and-forth between him and special envoy Richard Grenell, along with oil companies who’d welcome a deal to exploit Venezuela’s enormous reserves, Rubio and deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller have carried the day with a full-fledged plan to pressure and perhaps depose the Venezuelan leader. Other countries in the region are expected to take notice. ....................(more)
https://www.salon.com/2025/10/23/little-marco-goes-big-maga-with-his-eyes-on-the-white-house/
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