Somewhere Evil Keebler Elf Jeff Sessions is smiling given what former RNC Chair Michael Steele is saying about our shiny new little Trump Secretary of State Toy. Steele pulls no punches, flat-out saying Trump not only put Rubio in one of the highest level cabinet positions (like he did with Sessions), he did so specifically to PUNK him! Yep, Trump wants a tetherball and this time around it seems the guy Trump “branded” as “Little Marco” is it.
There’s a good article in The Daily Best worth the time you should read. Early on it lays things out. Early on it notes how Steele, who co-hosts The Weekend on MSNBC was talking with conservative strategist/pundit Susan Del Percio. Steele was quite clear in alleging Trump chose Rubio as a way to ‘punk the hell of of him’ because (speaking of Rubio and his history on foreign policy) “Because this is a guy who has a core.” Which Trump is forcing Rubio to abandon and what he will suffer is worse humiliation than Sessions did. If you recall Trump and Sessions were ideologically aligned and the latter would stand there with Trump with eyes shining bright and fighting the urge to jump up and down over the plans they had! But it didn’t last of course and Sessions was ritually humiliated by Trump over and over. Steele thinks, and I do too that Rubio is in for similar if not worse humiliation:
“This is a guy who always, particularly in the Senate, fought very openly about the democracy piece and how important it was for the U.S. to use its soft power through agencies like USAID, for the U.S. to be on the front lines of confronting the aggression of our enemies like China economically and Russia militarily,” Steele said, noting he has known Rubio for “a long, long time.”
Steele then added, “And here he is now at the State Department, and what does he have to do? He has to do what Donald Trump tells him to do, to do those things that go exactly counter to what he’s always stood for.”
Trump didn’t need Rubio to win Florida and re-election last November. But Rubio was a solid ally in the Senate for Trump first time around. Not that Trump appreciated it and in fact seemed to delight in sometimes getting in a dig at “Little Marco.” Sessions on the other hand was vital for Trump winning in 2016. He was the first Senator to publicly back Trump whole hog. He also lent a top staffer to Trump to keep him from continuing to f**k up his campaign because it didn’t know how to do the most basic stuff. Yep, it was Stephen Miller that Sessions ‘loaned’ to the Trump campaign and look at how it all worked out. Sessions is in exile living a retirement of humiliation at the hands of Trump (and Miller) and Miller is still there wielding enormous power in a second Trump administration.
Anyone want to bet that at some point that “core” Rubio Steele spoke of will slip out and make some comment that infuriates Trump? Or for that matter Trump doesn’t know that moment will come, that it’s inevitable? When it happens Little Marco’s fall will be spectacular. “Little?” by the time Trump is done whacking him around he’ll be reduced to the size of a grain of sand on one of Florida’s beaches! As Steele put it when it comes to Rubio and others:
I call it the punking of Republicans by Trump to get them to do the things that they know they would never do otherwise.”
You know the saying – everything Trump touches dies and that’s especially true of political careers. People with ambition who think they can make like NASCAR drivers and “draft” off Trump. It hasn’t worked out well for any of them who aspire to one day sit where Trump now again sits. I predict Rubio will bitterly rue the day he chose to leave his comfy seat in the Senate to serve in this second Trump administration. Hell, given his prior support for so much USAID has done he already is having his Talking Heads ‘At the Waterfall’ head slap moment of “My God! What have I done?”
********** And now, a message from Ursula I hope you take to heart **********
Friends, I am forced to self-promote and ask you for money. We had a bad year compared with 2023 and the end of the year has been catastrophic. Traffic died on November 5. We are a small blog and completely self-supporting by ad revenue, donations, and subscriptions. If you can afford a monthly subscription that would help us out. If you can make a small donation, likewise. Our only goal is to stay in business and give you the best content we can generate. You are the wind beneath our wings. Thank you. Ursula
“Sessions on the other hand was vital for Trump winning in 2016. He was the first Senator to publicly back Trump whole hog.”
As an Alabamian, I kind of have to disagree with this assessment. Sessions wasn’t exactly that big a name in the Senate (in the 114th Congress, Sessions was the 18th most senior Senator overall and the 9th most senior among just GOPers) and Alabama was going to vote for whichever GOPer got the nomination and Trump led all the polls conducted in the state for the 6 months before the primary whereas Sessions only gave Trump his endorsement TWO DAYS before the primary. It could be easily argued that Sessions was simply “riding the wave” of Trump’s support in the state (if Trump hadn’t gotten the nomination, Sessions would’ve quickly switched his support to whoever did get the nomination; the State’s GOP doesn’t look too kindly on members who endorse outside the party–if Trump had pulled a “third-party” run and Sessions continued endorsing Trump, Sessions would’ve had to jump through hoops to run for re-election as a Republican in 2020).
I don’t disagree about the value of Session’s endorsement in Alabama itself. And let’s face it, if a race was between the Jeebus the average Alabamans claims to worship and Satan if Jeebus was running as the Democrat and Satan as the Republican then it would be Senator Satan of Alabama! What made Session’s endorsement important was that he was the first Senator, and there are only a hundred to step up and tell the GOP at-large Trump was “the guy.” More importantly as fellow Senators knew was that Trump had fumbled enough easy stuff out of sheer incompetence in how to actually run for Office that having a Senator who knew how things worked, or were supposed to work mattered.
Remember that the GOP establishment was generally horrified by Trump and COUNTED on his campaign imploding via either the public being equally horrified in numbers to overwhelm the then nascent MAGA movement or ‘campaign incompetence/mismanagement’ or both. However even before the actual endorsement Sessions was stepping in to help teach Trump and his people what they needed to do. Campaign 101 stuff. I agree at the time Sessions was hardly a major figure in the GOP or national politics but he knew the system and for one of the few times in his life Trump actually admitted to himself he didn’t have a freaking clue on all those pesky details about ballot access and such and needed help.
Sessions was willing to lend both his own expertise and also more importantly STAFF, including the aforementioned Miller. Because of that the early mistakes in pretty basic shit the Trump campaign had been making stopped happening and that’s what other Senators and others in the Party had feared. That’s the point I tried to make. Trump was getting all kinds of attention but kept tripping over his too-long tie in the nitty gritty details of running a national campaign. It was Sessions and his staff (again, especially Miller who was detailed full-time to Trump) that smoothed out the operation.
Had Sessions done what others had been doing, just stay on the sidelines and let things unfold who knows? But once it was clear he was all-in on helping the Trump operation learn how to function it was a different ballgame. Sessions took a gamble on Trump and it paid off “bigly” for him. At least for a while. Alas, he was steeped just enough in the traditions of the Senate (and government) in which he’d served to do the “unforgivable” and recuse himself from investigation of Trump getting Russian assistance. So Trump made Sessions pay.
I completely agree with you and Steele. It makes perfect sense. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what Trump was thinking in putting Rubio to State. Every other nominee is perfectly, 180 degrees OPPOSITE UNsuited for their proposed job. Not one of them has ANY experience for that for which they were nominated, and they ALL show Trump’s determination to create a TRUE kakistocracy. EXCEPT MARCO. He is completely knowledgable in his field, eminently competent to run State, and well liked and respected by ALL senators on both aisles (99-0 approval). How can this be, given “TRUMP” ?! NOW I get it. Thank you Denis and Michael Steele.
Rubio had the unmitigated gall to run against Trump twice. He also actually knows more than Donnie Donuts about foreign policy and international politics. For both reasons– challenging Trump for presidency and knowing more than the ignorant back the unforgivable sins in Trump world.