Trump expected to name pro-Israel Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state
Despite isolationist bent, US president-elect also said to tap Florida congressman Michael Waltz as national security adviser, rounding out emergent hawkish foreign policy team
US President-elect Donald Trump is expected to tap Senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state and Rep. Michael Waltz as national security adviser, The New York Times reported Monday, pushing the emergent cabinet in a hawkish, pro-Israel direction.
Three people familiar with Trump’s thinking on Rubio said the president-elect could still change his mind, but appeared settled on the Republican Florida senator, who was also on the shortlist to be Trump’s running mate, the Times said. The appointment of Waltz, a third-term Republican congressman from Florida, is final, according to two people familiar with the decision cited in the report.
Both men have notably hawkish views on China, which they see as a threat and challenge to US economic and military might.
The two will be key architects of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, with the incoming US president having promised to end the wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East and avoid any more American military entanglements.
Rubio and Waltz will join the strongly pro-Israel New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, whom Trump named as his ambassador to the United Nations on Monday.
Rubio, arguably the most hawkish option on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of state, has in past years advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba. In 2016, Rubio slammed then-candidate Trump for pledging neutrality on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Over the last several years Rubio has softened some of his stances to align with Trump’s more isolationist views, but remains a staunch supporter of Israel.
He has also accused US President Joe Biden of insufficient support for Israel as it wages war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which started with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted; Hezbollah began launching rockets and drones at Israel the next day. In April, after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel, Rubio said the Biden administration was working to prevent an Israeli response because it was “still catering to its anti-Israel, antisemitic base.”
Waltz, a former Green Beret, has also accused Biden of pressuring Israel into a ceasefire that would “leave Hamas terrorists in power in Gaza.”
Writing in The Economist earlier this month, Waltz said that “the next administration should, as Mr. Trump argued, ‘let Israel finish the job’ and ‘get it over with fast’ against Hamas.”
He also called for the next administration to “make clear to the Iranians that America would stop them building nuclear weapons and reinstate a diplomatic and economic pressure campaign to stop them and to constrain their support for terror proxies,” which include Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
A member of the House Armed Services, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees, Waltz had caught the eye of Trump’s White House early in his congressional career, according to the Times. In 2020, Waltz was one of a select few Republicans to be briefed by the White House on the US-led assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, according to the report.
Despite the pro-Israel nature of Trump’s foreign policy appointments, three sources told The Times of Israel that “certain ministers” in Israel should not assume the Republican’s return to the White House meant it was time for Israel to annex the West Bank.
In his previous administration, Trump delighted Jerusalem by recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and brokering peace deals with Arab nations. In return for the latter, Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank were put on hold.
Agencies contributed to this report.
