Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio has flown under the radar as the media spotlight shines a light on controversial cabinet picks like Matt Gaetz and RFK Jr. In many ways, however, Rubio—who will head the first or second most powerful federal department alongside Defense and will be on the short list in the presidential line of succession—is the most extreme and radical of them all.
Rubio, an unreconstructed neoconservative who would have been home in the Bush Administration that brought about the misbegotten war against Iraq, is exactly the kind of DC swamp creature Trump promised to purge. And he’s espoused extremist militarist positions against Latin American nations like Venezuela, Nicaragua snd Cuba. He’s out to pick a fight with China.
On today’s The TMI Show, co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan are joined by human rights, labor rights, and peace activist Dan Kovalik, to explain how State became more militaristic than Defense, why Trump picked a member of the DC “blob”for State and what it means for Trump’s foreign policy.
Donald Trump’s election victory caused most people to think that the war between Russia and Ukraine would soon come to an end as the United States pulled back on its financial and military support for Ukraine, something the former president promised repeatedly. However, what was expected to be a quiet transition in America’s proxy war heated up dramatically after President Joe Biden reversed himself in order to allow Ukraine to fire US-made and US-operated ATACMS missiles up to 200 miles inside the Russian Federation. As Russian president Vladimir Putin had threatened to do, Russia quickly responded by updating its nuclear doctrine to authorize Russian military leaders to launch a nuclear strike against any nuclear-armed country that attacks Russia whether it uses nuclear or conventional weapons.
During the campaign, President-Elect Donald Trump promised to bring a rapid conclusion to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict that began in 2022. But most Americans aren’t aware of how or why the war began in the first place. Now the waters are getting further muddied by a decision of President Biden, a lame duck with just two months left in his term, to allow Ukraine to fire long-range American missiles deep into Russia itself.
After an election, we make nice. The loser congratulates the victor; everybody shakes hands and promises a smooth transition of power. Spicy campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, such courtesies in service to the god of Stability are made possible by the underlying assumption that, while competing candidates and parties offer different ideas of how to achieve a better America, that’s the goal we all want because we all 