Clipped Wings

Marco Rubio has a “minder.”

Well, maybe. That’s what HuffPost reporter Jennifer Bendery claimed back on February 5, citing a State Department source. “He has a minder, like a Trump campaign minder,” the source told her of the man now ostensibly leading the agency. “Someone in his office, not of his choosing…. They sent somebody over because he wasn’t totally within the fold.”

The thought of that pleases me, even though I’m no more than 50-50 on whether it’s true. In my mind’s eye I picture the “minder” as a pimply 19-year-old twerp in the same mold as Elon Musk’s DOGE henchmen. I like to imagine him having to officially approve the text whenever Secretary Marco drafts a new diplomatic communique to Russia or China.

A 🔥 emoji means it’s okay to send. A 💩 emoji means it’s back to the drawing board.

The only consolation classical liberals can expect from a second Donald Trump presidency is the schadenfreude that comes from seeing the toadies who serve him get what they deserve. The ongoing humiliation of Marco Rubio will be a delightful subplot of U.S. politics until either Trump tires of him or Rubio tires of being humiliated—almost certainly the former, as the new secretary’s willingness to be embarrassed appears limitless.

Some humiliations will be more enjoyable than others, though.

For instance, it was not fun to read in Tuesday’s Washington Post that two DOGE bros whose combined age is less than Rubio’s have begun “vetoing” USAID payments that the State Department had approved. Among them is funding for PEPFAR, which has saved millions of lives by providing HIV treatments to African countries and was lavishly praised in the past by … Sen. Marco Rubio. According to the Post, by mid-February the DOGE boys were the only officials capable of accessing the USAID payment system; with the PEPFAR funding in limbo, AIDS clinics in Africa have started shutting down.

That episode, while tremendously humiliating for Rubio, isn’t enjoyable at all.

Other reports are more fun. Last week, for example, Politico alleged that, due to their long records as Reaganite hawks, Rubio and national security adviser Michael Waltz “are under intense internal scrutiny” from “America First” Russia simps in the West Wing like Stephen Miller and Sergio Gor. A source close to Rubio said the new secretary of state “knows the knives are out for him” already, with junior diplomat Ric Grenell supposedly wielding the sharpest blade: “He knows that [Grenell] is gunning for his job and will go to Trump and demand he fires Marco the first time he says anything that contradicts the boss.”

None of that proves that the rumors about a MAGA “minder” watching Rubio are true. But, lord knows, it sure doesn’t contradict them either.

On that note, I have a question for Secretary Rubio—and for Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. Lindsey Graham and Ret. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the White House’s envoy for Ukraine and Russia. All are well-known hawks, all have accommodated themselves to Trump and Trumpism, and all have now been enlisted to greater or lesser extents in the grand postliberal project of dismantling the American-led western order.

My question is this: What have you gotten in exchange for helping to make America, and the world, safe for autocracy?

The UN sellout.

On Monday, the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations adopted a Ukrainian resolution condemning Moscow for its aggression and demanding the return of conquered territory. Only 18 nations voted no. They were the usual “Axis of Evil” suspects—Russia and North Korea, and … the United States.

Later, the U.S. introduced its own resolution calling for an end to the fighting and carefully withholding any judgments about culpability. Several amendments were offered to add language critical of Russia to the text; when those amendments passed, the U.S. delegation chose to abstain rather than vote in favor of its own amended resolution.

“The U.N. doesn’t matter,” you might say to all that, fairly enough. In any matter of international relations, “The U.N. doesn’t matter” is a solid response.

But I’d turn that logic around: It’s because the U.N. doesn’t matter that the United States joining Russia in opposing Ukraine’s resolution is significant. We didn’t need to do it. Peace talks would not have collapsed if America had voted against Moscow, as the White House under both parties has been doing since the 1940s.

We did it because Trump wanted to do it. It was an opportunity for moral signaling and the signal he chose to send was that the U.S. no longer deems fascist expansionism as inimical to its interests. Former Dispatch-er Andrew Egger put it well: “I think UN votes are cosplay and it’s in fact notable that this administration would choose to cosplay as one of the baddies.”

Precisely because the vote meant so little, one might think Trump would have used it to throw Rubio, Cotton, Graham, Kellogg, and other GOP hawks a bone by supporting Ukraine’s resolution. It’d be good politics, if nothing else—most Americans hate Vladimir Putin—but it’d also be a small gesture of thanks to the many Reaganites who work so hard day after day to rationalize his authoritarianism at home and abroad.

Formally agreeing that Russia has been naughty was, quite literally, the least the president could have done to soothe the moral consciences of his conservative allies as he turns Ukraine upside down and shakes it until change falls out of its pockets. But in the end, he wouldn’t even do that.

And so I ask again: What exactly are his hawkish golfing buddies in the Cabinet and in the Senate getting in return for defending him? If courting Trump is designed to gain his trust and steer him toward supporting the Pax Americana, at what point do these people conclude that they’ve failed utterly and it’s time to rouse popular opposition to his sellout to Moscow by aggressively denouncing it?

Because the U.S. choosing to vote with Russia against Ukraine kind of feels like that moment.

The kids’ table.

It was Marco Rubio, of all people, who gave an interview defending America’s disgrace at the U.N. to Trumpist propaganda outlet Breitbart.

Rubio’s Reaganite foreign policy views used to have an intense moral component. On Tuesday, the New York Times recalled how, as a senator in 2017, he opened his questioning of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of State, by confrontationally asking, “Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?” When Tillerson dodged, Rubio scolded him: “I find it discouraging, your inability to cite that which I think is globally accepted.” The senator worried, with reason, that the new president’s interest in detente with Moscow (and the new nominee’s business relations with Russia) would lead him to whitewash Putin’s fascism.

That was Rubio 1.0 to the core. To lead the West against the enemies of liberalism, he believed, America needed to speak the truth about them clearly and unapologetically. “Vladimir Putin is not interested in a better working relationship with the United States,” he told an audience in 2018, per the Times. “He believes that the only way to make Russia stronger is to make America weaker.”

Rubio 2.0 has become the same mealy-mouthed apologist wary of antagonizing Russia that he suspected Tillerson of being in 2017. In speaking to Breitbart on Monday following the U.N. vote, he couldn’t bring himself to utter words blaming Moscow for the war; the furthest he’d go was to say that “everyone knows [who’s responsible], and you can go back and read newspaper articles over the last three years and figure out what happened.” Not only is clarity no longer a diplomatic priority for him, in fact, it’s an obstacle. “We didn’t feel it was conducive, frankly, to have something out there at the UN that’s antagonistic to either side,” he told Breitbart.

You can imagine the sweat droplets beading on his forehead as he said that, hoping it was anti-anti-fascist enough to satisfy Ric Grenell.

Needless to say, Rubio was lying. Donald Trump had no problem being “antagonistic” toward Volodymyr Zelensky when he called him a dictator last week, a criticism from which he’s conspicuously exempted Putin. And sparing Russia from blame for the war is hard to square with Trump’s typical impulse to demonstrate “strength” and “toughness” in all things. Russia is the aggressor; Russia alone can end the conflict unilaterally by laying down its arms; it stands to reason that Russia, not Ukraine, should be the target of “tough” American pressure tactics aimed at forcing a ceasefire. Why hasn’t it been?

Marco Rubio has spent nearly a decade trying to earn back Donald Trump’s trust, successfully enough to have landed in his Cabinet. But not only has he failed to convert Trump to hawkishness, he himself has been converted into a spin doctor muttering apologias for the very sort of amoral authoritarian power politics that he despised as a senator. “Cabinet 2.0 is likely to function as a coterie of glorified press secretaries tasked with defending the actually meaningful decisions that are made in the West Wing,” I wrote a week after the election. Isn’t that exactly what’s happened?

He’s not the only hawk who’s been made to seem ridiculous, though.

Kellogg, the president’s nominal envoy for Russia and Ukraine, was cut out of talks between the U.S. and Russia in Saudi Arabia and instead dispatched to meet Zelensky in Kyiv, at what some officials derisively describe as “the kids’ table” in peace-brokering. The White House ended up canceling a planned press conference between the two men, likely fearing that Kellogg would undermine Trump’s pro-Russian position due to his Ukraine sympathies.

Tom Cotton? He discovered last week how little years of loyal service matter to Trump’s supporters when a postliberal foreign policy priority is on the line. Cotton is reportedly troubled by the nomination of Elbridge Colby, who wants the U.S. to pivot away from Russia and the Middle East and toward China, for a top position at the Pentagon. But Colby is a favorite of “America First” demagogues like Charlie Kirk, who began accusing Cotton publicly of trying to sabotage Colby’s important work of “stopping the Bush/Cheney cabal at DOD.”

In a party in which high officials now answer to people named “Catturd,” that was too much heat for the senator. In response to the criticism, he agreed to meet with Colby and will, I assume, talk himself into supporting his nomination the same way he talked himself into supporting Tulsi Gabbard’s.

As for ol’ Lindsey Graham, his supposed influence over Trump’s Ukraine policy now seems to consist mainly of tweeting statements of support for Kyiv that matter not a bit to anyone and in no way reflect the sentiments of his good friend Donald.

It’s one thing to sell one’s soul, it’s another to sell one’s soul for nothing. To watch hawkish Republicans be sidelined by the White House or, worse, reduce themselves to mouthing anti-NATO bromides about “provocations” like some ‘70s-era commissar is to reflect on the Reaganite effort to convert Trump and wonder: Who, exactly, ended up assimilating whom?

Did these guys get anything policy-wise from their decade of kissing Trump’s ass?

Haley or Rubio?

“If not for the influence of hawks,” they might respond, “Trump wouldn’t have supported Ukraine as much as he did in his first term.”

Fair enough, I guess, if you don’t count the attempted shakedown that got the president impeached in 2019. Trump was surrounded by hawks like Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo in his first administration, and his Ukraine policy was bound to reflect that. But that was a product of circumstance: There was no “bench” of postliberal ideologues on the right at the time for him to draw from, and the slavish loyalty that defined the right-wing base hadn’t yet fully infected the Republican professional class.

Circumstances change. Trump now has the people he wants and his Ukraine policy has begun to reflect that. He doesn’t need to listen to hawks anymore, so he isn’t. What he’s doing instead is remaking the world order in a way that seems almost scientifically engineered to mortify the likes of Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Lindsey Graham. And he dropped plenty of hints during the campaign that he was headed in that direction.

Why did these chumps continue to support him after he did so?

“If not for the influence of hawks,” they might contend, “Trump wouldn’t support Israel as staunchly.” But that’s nonsense: Israel is a priority for all but the most Tucker-ish elements of the Republican base; Reaganites, evangelicals, and nationalists keen to protect the Judeo-Christian tribe from Muslim usurpers all have their reasons for supporting the Jewish state. I’ll concede that Trump might have been less antagonistic toward Iran without Republican hawks advising him—but then, he might end up being less antagonistic than they’d like him to be regardless.

“If not for the influence of hawks,” they might insist, “Trump wouldn’t be as tough on China.” That’s also nonsense. Trump, the great protectionist, was treating China as the job-stealing global villain-in-chief from his early days as a candidate in 2015, and if he hadn’t been, the COVID-19 pandemic would have pointed him in that direction by now without any help from hawks. Ultimately, in fact, I think China will prove to be a better example of how little influence hawks have over the president rather than how much. When Beijing finally makes its move on Taiwan or South Korea or Japan, it’s farcical to believe that a guy who’s busy right now selling out Europe to Russia will decline to sell out further-flung liberal allies to a much more menacing military power.

Trump will make some sort of “great, big, beautiful deal” with the Chinese that concedes their hegemony over the Far East. And demoralized hawks like Rubio, Cotton, and Graham will dutifully do interviews with Breitbart polishing that turd to a mirror shine.

The real reason Republicans in Washington have made peace with an American-led authoritarian project to demolish the liberal order is simple, I think. In the end, you’re either Marco Rubio or you’re Nikki Haley. There are no other options.

On Monday, after the U.S. had disgraced itself at the U.N., Trump’s former U.N. ambassador tweeted her disappointment. “America has always been a pillar of freedom and democracy,” Haley wrote. “We have to have the moral clarity to know the difference between good and evil and right and wrong. We can’t blur those lines. We must choose a side, and it should never be the side of dictators.”

No one cared. I didn’t care, Trumpists didn’t care, leftists didn’t care. Haley’s message was correct, but insofar as it evoked any emotion, that emotion was contempt from all sides. The populist right hates her for her Reaganite outlook; the rest of us hate her for having sold out that outlook by endorsing Trump knowing full well that he would govern as he has.

Would you rather be her or Marco Rubio?

They’re both politically irrelevant. They’ve both shed every ounce of honor they possess in the course of reconciling themselves to Trump. They’re both doomed to live out their lives in a country which, day by day, they recognize less and despise more. But they took different paths at a fork in the road: Haley chose to gamble her political future by challenging Trump in last year’s primary whereas Rubio chose to remain a loyal ally of the president’s.

He took what I call the “money pit” approach to Trumpism. Eventually, you’ve spent so much of your dignity in defending what the right has become that the only thing to do is to keep on spending in the name of protecting your “investment.” It’s the sunk-cost fallacy, except for morals.

Haley’s choice led her to political oblivion; Rubio’s choice led him to the illusion of relevance. He rides around now in limousines and meets with VIPs and gives important statements to Breitbart—provided his “minder” signs off, of course—and maybe, occasionally, he influences the president’s thinking a tiny bit at the margins. Just not enough to convince him not to join the Axis of Evil or jackhammer the Pax Americana.

Would you rather have oblivion or the illusion of relevance? Would you rather be Mike Pence or a senator for life in a safe seat, like Cotton and Graham? Would you rather host a podcast or get to be the bagman in a world-historic attempt to extort a country fighting for its survival, like Marco Rubio?

Would you rather be forgotten or remembered as a villain?

Some men yearn to be remembered and will do what’s needed to ensure that they are, rather than join the rest of us in obscurity. That’s Rubio, Cotton, and Graham. Good news, fellas: You will be remembered. I’ll do my part to make sure of it.

Correction, February 25: An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect reference to how Iran voted on the Ukrainian U.N. resolution. Iran abstained.