Vice President JD Vance swore in Marco Rubio as secretary of state on Tuesday, officially making him President Donald Trump’s first cabinet member.
Vance praised Rubio as “one of my favorite people in Washington” ahead of the swearing-in.
“He’s a son of Cuban immigrants to this country. He grew up in very humble beginnings, but he has an incredibly deep love of our nation. He is a bipartisan solutions seeker, a guy who can actually get things done, but a conservative of great principle and great vision,” Vance said, adding:
And I think, more than almost anybody that I’ve met in Washington the last few years, Senator Rubio, I think, understands the distinctive priorities of President Trump and why it represents such a significant and frankly, important and needed departure from a generation of failed foreign policy.
The newly minted secretary then thanked his wife, Jeanette, his four children, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch (R-ID), who he called one of his “closest friends in my time in the U.S. Senate.”
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Rubio said Trump has directed that every action taken in the State Department “must be justified by the answer to one of three questions: Does it make us stronger? Does it make us safer? And does it make us more prosperous?”
“If it doesn’t do one of those three things, we will not do it. And so that is the goal, and that is the task, and that is the promise that he was elected to keep, and that is the promise he will keep, and we will help him keep,” the secretary continued.
Rubio also noted his belief that America is entering “a new era” he thinks “will make the world a safer place.”
Rubio’s former colleagues in the Senate unanimously confirmed him as secretary on Monday, 99-0. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has appointed Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) to finish out Rubio’s term in the Senate.
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