Secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio defends Trump’s foreign policy vision
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Florida senator defended the ‘America First’ agenda and his own hawkish record in Senate committee hearing. Marco Rubio has offered a full-throated defense of Donald Trump’s vision for America’s role around the world – and his own hawkish record on foreign policy – as the Florida senator faced questions by the Senate foreign relations committee as Trump’s nominee for secretary of state.
Rubio’s opening remarks were disrupted several times by protestors from leftwing activist groups who called him a “war hawk” and decried his record of support for sanctions abroad before being dragged out of the hearing room. In his opening remarks, Rubio sought to defend a muscular US foreign policy while also tailoring his views to a more Trump-friendly vision that matches the president-elect’s “America First” policy, which has called on less US involvement abroad in Ukraine and Nato, in a sharp departure from the position of the Biden administration and many Republican lawmakers.
“Prudence in the conduct of foreign policy is not an abandonment of our values,” Rubio said in his opening remarks. “It’s the common-sense understanding that while we remain the wealthiest and the most powerful nation on the Earth, our wealth has never been unlimited … Placing our core national interest above all else is not isolation.” It is a “common-sense realization”, he added.
