Egypt Daily News – US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Senator Marco Rubio to be his Secretary of State, sources said on Monday, making the Florida-born politician the first Latino to hold the position of chief diplomat in the United States once the Republican president takes office in January.
Rubio is undoubtedly the most hawkish choice among Trump’s small list of nominees for Secretary of State, and in recent years he has called for a strong foreign policy with America’s enemies, including China, Iran, and Cuba.
The president-elect accuses previous US presidents of dragging the country into costly and useless wars, and is pushing for a more conservative foreign policy.
Although Trump can always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have settled on his choice on Monday, according to sources who requested anonymity.
Representatives for Trump and Rubio have not yet responded to requests for comment.
The new administration will face global situations that are more volatile and dangerous than when Trump took office in 2017, amid wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and China aligning more closely with its enemy.
The Ukraine crisis will be at the top of Rubio’s agenda.
Rubio, 53, said in recent interviews that Ukraine needs to seek a negotiated settlement with Russia instead of focusing on restoring all the territory that Moscow seized over the past decade.
He was also one of 15 Senate Republicans who voted against a $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, which passed in April. “I am not on Russia’s side, but unfortunately the reality is that the way the war in Ukraine will end is to reach a negotiated settlement,” Rubio told NBC last September.
Choosing Rubio for a key policy role helps Trump consolidate gains among Latinos and show they have a place at the highest levels of his administration.
Rubio is one of the most prominent anti-China hawks in the Senate, and Beijing imposed sanctions on him in 2020 because of his position on Hong Kong after pro-democracy protests.
Rubio, whose grandfather fled Cuba in 1962, is also an outspoken opponent of normalizing relations with the Cuban government, a position with which Trump agrees.
