Secretary of state, acting administrator for USAID, acting lead archivist, acting national security adviser. Marco Rubio, the politician Trump once dubbed “little Marco,” has become the president’s go-to guy for big roles in the administration. But Democrats are casting doubt on whether it is possible for Rubio — or anyone — to balance all of those jobs.
Host Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Tammy Duckworth whether she had “confidence that [Rubio] can juggle all four of the jobs that he now has for an indefinite period of time.”
“No. There’s no way he can do that and do it well, especially since there’s such incompetence over at DOD with Pete Hegseth being secretary of defense, and just the hollowing out of the top leadership,” said Duckworth, who represents Illinois and sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, during a Sunday interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. “There’s no way he can carry all that entire load on his own.”
Duckworth stressed the importance of finding a “new head of [the National Security Agency] as quickly as possible.”
No U.S. official has occupied the offices of national security adviser and secretary of state since Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration.
The senator went on to advocate for the firing of Secretary of Defense Hegseth, a former Fox News host whose tenure has been beleaguered by scandal, including sharing military attack plans in two unsecured Signal chats, bringing his wife to meetings with high-ranking officials, and pricing a $10-15,000 makeup studio inside the Pentagon (which was eventually downgraded to a glam countertop).
Trump insists, however, that while Hegseth has “had a hard time,” he will eventually “get it together.”
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner also raised concerns about Rubio’s many hats, saying, “I don’t know how anybody could do these two big jobs.”
Warner, who appeared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, added that the roles of national security adviser and secretary of state are “frankly very different.” He pointed out that Rubio is also still leading “the remnants of what used to be American soft power for 70 years, USAID.”
“Even for a Marco Rubio… I think it’s too much,” Warner said, adding that while he and Rubio “worked very well” together “for years” in the Senate, he is “disappointed by some of the actions [Rubio has] taken as secretary in this kind of kowtowing to Trump.”
One such instance of kowtowing was a cabinet meeting just last week where, Warner said, “everyone went around and basically paid kudos to the great leader.”
“It was something that, frankly, I would have expected out of North Korea, maybe, not out of a cabinet meeting in America,” Warner added.
Warner, who serves as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also advocated for Hegseth to leave his role as secretary of defense and for Tulsi Gabbard to vacate her position as director of national intelligence.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t hear people’s morale is plummeting because of their lack of confidence in these leaders,” Warner said of Hegseth and Gabbard.
Both Duckworth and Warner forecasted a “brutal” confirmation hearing for Mike Waltz, Trump’s former national security adviser. Rubio took over that role after Waltz was fired for adding a reporter to an unsecured Signal chat where Hegseth shared attack plans against Houthis in Yemen. Trump then nominated Waltz to be his U.N. ambassador instead.
“It will be a brutal hearing. He’s not qualified for the job, just by nature of the fact that he participated in the Signal chain,” Duckworth said of Waltz. “In fact, I think everybody on that Signal chain needs to be fired.”
“Mike Waltz is… failing up… He is failing in his job and getting promoted to be ambassador,” Duckworth added. She said that she will not vote to confirm Waltz as U.N. ambassador.
Warner, however, did not indicate whether he plans to support Waltz’s nomination.
When host Jake Tapper asked whether Warner has “faith in” Waltz to be U.N. ambassador, Warner replied, “Waltz at least acknowledged a bit of a mistake. I think he’s going to have tough questions not only from Democrats, but from Republicans.”
Waltz’s confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled, but the committee has said it is a “priority.” A Republican source told Fox News the hearing will likely take place “in June or July” to give people time to “forget about the Signalgate stuff, or at the very, very least, they’re going to forget about Mike Waltz’s role in it.”
