The ongoing humiliation of Marco Rubio: a metaphor for America
The media once touted Marco Rubio as the "Latin Obama" ... now he's just comic relief
Marco Rubio has been many things.
He’s been a rising star in Florida politics; Jeb Bush’s perceived heir apparent, to whom the former Republican governor and scion of the Bush dynasty literally handed a golden scepter as Rubio ascended to the speakership of the Florida House — becoming the first Cuban-American to do so.
He’s been a rising national media star, who many of my fellow political journalists couldn’t stop gushing over from the moment of his 2010 U.S. Senate run, to the point where it wasn’t just a Republican diss: mainstream media repeatedly designated Rubio as the Republican’s Latin Obama: the literal Savior of the Grand Old Party. His immigrant background! His youthful Latin looks! His HAIR!!!
For those who’ve covered him for years, he’s been the ultimate shape-shifter: switching religions (from Catholic to Mormon, back to Catholic and then to evangelical Christian, seemingly depending on the political utility… and switching political religions too. Rubio started life as a traditional Bush-Reagan Republican but somehow morphed into a “tea party” U.S. Senate candidate in 2010, when that designation became politically convenient with the rabidly Obama-hating Republican base.
But Rubio was a Reaganite hiding in plain site.
He used to be so woke, he defended immigration in Spanish as a commentator on Univision back in the day. While running for the Senate, he joined Jeb! and other normie Republicans in denouncing Arizona’s 2010 “papers please” law. Once elected to America’s most prestigious deliberative body, he joined Senator John McCain and the rest of the bipartisan “gang of eight” in drafting a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and he took the plan on the road to sell it to his new Tea Party base, until Rush Limbaugh attacked him on his radio show and he backed off the bill that his own Senate staff had helped to write.
One thing you’ve never been able to accuse Lil’ Marco of being is a man of principle. In fact, his only core belief is in his own ambition. He will literally become, say, befriend or make an enemy of anyone or thing he needs to in order to feed his rise.
If someone stood up in a crowd
And raised his voice up way out loud
And waved his arm and shook his leg
You'd notice him
If someone in the movie show
Yelled "Fire in the second row
This whole place is a powder keg!"
You'd notice him
And even without clucking like a hen
Everyone gets noticed, now and then,
Unless, of course, that personage should be
Invisible, inconsequential me!
Cellophane
Mister Cellophane
Shoulda been my name
Mister Cellophane
'Cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me
And never know I'm there...
Mister Cellophane - from the musical Chicago
As such, it should come as no surprise that Rubio also proudly played the role of the proverbial knife in Jeb’s back - challenging his former political mentor and literal Miami neighbor in 2016 by running against him for president — sticking a swarthy foot out to trip Bush up on what he thought was his last chance road to the White House. The Bush betrayal drew an ugly backlash from Jeb’s allies in Florida (including many Cuban American politicos who told me at the time that the streets preferred Jeb! (exclamation point added by his failed campaign) to the treacherous Lil’ Marco.
He’s also been a bit of a scandal bag. His presidential run was tripped up by a revived scandal over allegations that as House speaker he used money donated to two political action committees he set up before becoming speaker as a kind of slush fund (and ditto for his Florida Republican Party-issued credit card) for personal expenses: a pricey family reunion trip, car repairs, credit card payments and in one of my all time great scoops from way back in my blogger days: private school tuition for his kids.
None of that has stopped Mister Cellophane from clawing, grasping and beclowning his way to perhaps not the top, but at least proximity to it. Not even his most embarrassing fails.
He was the Designated Responder to Obama’s 2013 state of the union address. That ended in slurpy, gulpy, wee bottle humiliation.
During his 2016 presidential bid, he tried to trip of Donald Trump’s first romp to the White House by trying penis size humor in response to Trump mocking him as “Lil’ Marco.” Sadly, it just made him look even “Liller” (although Trump did feel obligated to defend his allegedly tiny endowment.) At least Trump didn’t imply that Rubio’s wife, who is a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, is ugly, like he did to Ted Cruz’s missus — after which Cruz, following a brief complaint, also sidled up to The Donald and meekly handed over his manhood.
Like “Lyin’ Ted,” Lil Marco has gone on to become one of Trump’s most solicitous defenders, both during his first administration and now his second. So it should come as no one’s surprise that he has cast aside whatever is left of his dignity along with all remnants of his past positions supporting USAID and foreign aid in general as Trump’s obsequious secretary of state, along with his longtime loathing of the Kremlin and support for Ukraine’s freedom fight against Putin’s Russia, to bend the knee to Trump’s Putin adoration and hatred of any country Vlad wants to drag back into a Soviet Union. Not to mention getting on board with the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza so Trump can erect a ghoulish fantasy resort from Hell on top of all those graves and demolished schools, universities, homes, mosques and hospitals.
And that brings us to what was one of the most humiliating moments in the nearly 500 year history of the United States, when Rubio joined other benighted members of his soulless party in gang-tackling Ukranian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy in the Oval, where Zelenskyy was nagged about not wearing a suit and tie, badgered by Trump and Peter Thiel’s employee J.D. Vance for not being grateful enough or agreeing to quietly hand over his country’s rare earth minerals to Trump like the ransom business owners who wanted to see the sunlight in the 1940s handed in an envelope to the goons for the local mob boss. It was a display emblematic of the awful reality we are living in where Trump and his administration are proudly showing in full of the world, who the president of the United States really works for.
As one European leader put it: the free world is gonna need a new leader.
Through the entire embarrassing episode, Rubio sat stiffly, looking pained and awkward, like he knows he sold his soul for magic beans. But Rubio deserves no more sympathy than Trump, who appears to have sold his soul not just to Putin but also to the world’s richest and weirdest billionaire, Elon Musk, for the promise of staying out of prison, maybe becoming president for life, and the opportunity to pretend to rename international bodies of water and resegregate America so it can be “great again.” These men knew what they were getting into. They know what they’re doing to America’s reputation, valor, economy and society. They are working in full knowledge of what havoc they’re wreaking, as is the Republican Party, which is now so far gone, Ronald Reagan has to be spinning like a whirling dervish in his grave. Well, other than the part about nuking Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and every social program in favor of shoving more money into the greedy little mittens of the super-rich. Ronny would likely be down for that part.
Case in point: both before and after the humiliating spectacle in the White House’s inner sanctum, Marco Rubio went on conservative state media and did the dance: attacking Zelenskyy and praising the master to his pathetic Renfield, Donald Trump.
Marco Rubio: How it started … how it’s going
Marco Rubio IS the Republican Party. He is the American sellout in human form. No indignity is too undignified. No hypocrisy is too unacceptable. And no soul auction is too humiliating to undertake if they can grab and hold power. They’ll do whatever it takes — including selling out American democracy for the most mediocre, bungling, embarrassing fascist regime in the history of kakistocratic oligarchies — all to grasp and hold the one ring to rule them all. Lil’ Marco was Smiegel, until he became Gollum.
Thank you so much, Joy! I am delighted to have you closer in my life this way. I get to hear you speak truth to power and be the magnificent woman we know you are. We thank you and we love you.
This should be on a billboard in Times Square! So spot on!🌻🇺🇦