Instead of Blinken — what we know about the new US SecState Rubio

After Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, Marco Rubio took over as Secretary of State. He replaced Anthony Blinken, who held the position from January 2021 to January 2025. This is the highest diplomatic post in the country, and this time it went to someone who had previously argued with Trump and competed with him in the election. 

Find out who Marco Rubio is and what he thinks about the war in Ukraine in the article by Novyny.LIVE.

Marco Rubio’s political career

Marco Rubio is 53 years old and is not a new face in US politics, like the newly appointed Vice President J.D. Vance. He comes from a family of immigrants from Cuba, but he has spent his entire life in the United States. He graduated from the College and then the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Arts degree (a specialist in the humanities — Ed.) and later a Juris Doctorate.

He began his political career in the nineties. In the 1990s, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives and later became its speaker. In 2010, he became a US senator, and in 2012, he was considered a likely vice presidential candidate on the team of presidential candidate Mitt Romney.  In the same year, Rubio was included in Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

In 2016, both Rubio and Trump planned to become presidential candidates, so they competed and argued with each other. Mark Rubio claimed that Trump had "small hands", and he, in turn, called his opponent "little Marco".

Rubio received unanimous support for the post of Secretary of State and became the first Latin American to hold this position. This means that he is the third person in the Executive Branch of the US government after the President and Vice President. In other countries, this position is comparable to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

"He will be a strong defender of our nation, a true friend to our allies, and a fearless warrior who will never back down from our adversaries," Trump explained on social media why Rubio should take the position. 

The US Secretary of State’s position on the war in Ukraine

For Ukraine, the appointment of the US Secretary of State means that this person will be in charge of foreign policy, so everything related to Russia’s war against Ukraine will not escape his attention. 

Even at the beginning of the full-scale war, Rubio called Putin a killer. 

But his rhetoric has changed over time, and he now believes that negotiations are needed. In an interview with NBC in September 2024, he emphasized: "I’m not on Russia’s side, but unfortunately, the reality is that the war in Ukraine will end through negotiations." 

In the Senate, he said that the official US position on the war in Ukraine should be that the war must end. 

We would like to add that Trump made a number of radical decisions in his first days in office, one of which was to cut off foreign aid.  But then the President of the United States withdrew his order to freeze federal aid programs. Marco Rubio, in turn, eased the freeze on foreign aid. 

Little is known about the politician’s personal life. He is married and has four children.

His wife, Jeanette Dousdebes, is a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader. They live in West Miami.

As we wrote earlier, the administration of the new President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, has resumed some international aid programs. It was US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who agreed to continue allocating funds for humanitarian programs.

As a reminder, Novyny.LIVE wrote what is known about the new US Vice President J.D. Vance and why Iraq is in his biography.