TALLAHASSEE, Florida, USA. — The virtual president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, has appointed Senator Marco Rubio to serve as Secretary of State.
Here are five things to know about Rubio, a Florida Republican currently serving as a senator and in his third term:
He is the son of Cuban immigrants
Rubio, 53, was born in Miami, a city he still considers home. His father was a bartender, and his mother was a hotel maid. In his first Senate campaign, he repeatedly emphasized his working-class background and how his story as the son of Cuban immigrants who became a senator could happen “only in the United States.”
Rubio is Catholic, but spent about six years of his childhood in Las Vegas, where he was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and attended Mormon worship. The family moved to the city when Rubio was 8 years old and his parents found employment in the growing hotel industry.
They returned to Miami when he was 14 years old.
Rubio played college football and married a professional cheerleader.
Rubio is a big football fan and dreamed of making it to the NFL when he played in high school. But he only received solid offers from two universities.
He chose little-known Tarkio College, located in a town of less than 2,000 people in the rural northwest corner of Missouri, but when the college declared bankruptcy and he suffered an injury, Rubio quit football and transferred to a college in Florida. He graduated from the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law.
He became engaged to Jeanette Dousdebes, who tried out and joined the Miami Dolphins cheerleading team. They married in 1998 and have four children.
He was almost appointed attorney general of Florida
Rubio was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and for a time served as majority leader and speaker of the house.
He was a longshot against then-Governor Charlie Crist for the Republican Senate nomination in 2010. Party leaders pressured him not to run for senator and instead run for attorney general, promising they would clear the way for him. free. “I was almost convinced that I should resign” from the Senate race, he wrote in his autobiography “An American Son.”
But when an Associated Press reporter questioned him about his alleged intentions to run for attorney general that week, Rubio responded unequivocally: “No.” Rubio later wrote that at the time he felt he could not go back on his word. He stayed in the race and won his first term in the Senate. He was re-elected in 2016 and again in 2022.
Rubio ran for president and clashed with Trump in 2016
Rubio participated in the 2016 presidential race, among a large group of Republican candidates that included Trump. Rubio won Minnesota, where Texas Sen. Ted Cruz came in second and Trump came in third. His only other victories were in Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.
He dropped out of the race after Trump defeated him in his home state. Trump won Florida with 45.7% of the vote, while Rubio came in a distant second with 27%.
Rubio and Trump exchanged verbal duels during the race, with Trump referring to Rubio as “little Marco.” Rubio responded by insulting the size of Trump’s hands and calling him a “conman” and “vulgar.”
Their relationship improved during Trump’s presidency. When ABC News earlier this year replayed some of the comments Rubio made in 2016, he downplayed them and said, “It was a campaign.”
He remained close to Trump even after being ruled out as Trump’s running mate, instead being taken by Ohio Sen. JD Vance. He traveled with the former president during the final stretch of the race, delivering speeches in English and Spanish at multiple rallies on the final day of the campaign.
Often makes references to foreign threats, especially from China
Rubio rode the wave of the conservative tea party movement in 2010, and gained national prominence. He campaigned by saying that then-President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress were threatening the nation’s economy by supporting disastrous domestic spending, tax and health care policies.
As vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio frequently speaks out about foreign military and economic threats, particularly from China. He warns that China, Iran, North Korea and Russia are allying against the United States.
“They all share one goal, and that is to weaken the United States, to weaken our alliances, to weaken our position and our ability and our will,” he said in a speech last March.
