Secretary of state. Acting administrator of the US Agency for International Development. Acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration. And now interim national security adviser to president Donald Trump.
Like a Christmas tree bedecked with shiny ornaments of every shape and size, Marco Rubio (53), has accumulated four titles starting with his confirmation as secretary of state on January 20th, the same day that Trump took his oath of office.
It very well could be a record in the modern history of the US government. And it adds to the immigrant success story that is core to the narrative of Rubio, a former senator from Florida whose father worked as a bartender and mother toiled as a housekeeper after they left Cuba for the United States.
But the proliferation of titles raises questions about whether Rubio can play any substantial role in the administration if he is juggling all these positions, especially under a president who eschews the traditional workings of government and who has appointed a businessman friend, Steve Witkoff, as a special envoy handling the most sensitive diplomacy.
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Trump announced Rubio’s newest position in a social media post on Thursday afternoon, a surprise twist in the first big personnel shake-up of this administration. The president had just ousted Michael Waltz from the White House national security adviser job as well as Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong. In the same post, Trump said Waltz would now be his nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations.
Rubio’s appointment to yet another job – as if he were cloned in a B-grade sci-fi movie – was so sudden that Tammy Bruce, the state department spokesperson, learned about it when a reporter read Trump’s social media post to her during a regular televised news conference.
“Yeah, so that is the miracle of modern technology and social media,” Bruce said. “So that is an exciting moment here.”
Scrambling to try to explain the events unfolding in real time, Bruce said: “We’ve seen him be at the White House several times a week, his close working relationship day to day with the president. They clearly have been in an environment where they’ve gotten to know each other very well.”
The fact that Rubio now leads four bodies is a sign not only of the trust placed in him by Trump, but also of the close relationship he has with Susie Wiles, the veteran political operative who is Trump’s chief of staff.
Of course, having four jobs also raises more practical issues: Does Rubio get a pay bump? Will he have time to hop around the globe to do diplomacy? How will he delegate his duties?
[ Trump sacks Mike Waltz over 'Signalgate'Opens in new window ]
There are precedents – sort of. From 1973-75, Henry Kissinger held two of Rubio’s jobs, secretary of state and national security adviser, in an experiment that was considered a failure. In the current Trump administration, two officials, Kash Patel, the FBI director, and Daniel Driscoll, the army secretary, have both been interim head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives while also serving in their more prominent posts.
But it might be more relevant to look outside the United States for examples. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, is general secretary of the Communist Party, president of China and chair of the Central Military Commission – still one job short of Rubio’s tally.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Rubio to be secretary of state. But he entered the other jobs under controversial circumstances. Trump fired the head archivist, Colleen Shogan, in early February in an apparent act of retribution against the National Archives and Records Administration. Leaders of the agency had raised concerns about Trump’s holding onto boxes of classified documents at his home in Florida after he left office in 2021, though Shogan was not involved in that episode.
Four days before Shogan’s firing, Rubio announced he was the acting administrator for USAID, as Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Trump, and Pete Marocco, a political appointee in the state department, were gutting the agency. Marocco and members of Musk’s government-slashing task force did the daily work of reducing the agency to a husk, cutting contracts and firing thousands of employees, but Rubio signed off on the moves.
Rubio is moving the remnants of the agency into the state department. Last week, he issued a chart on his planned department reorganisation that shows him keeping the title of USAID administrator.
Even before Trump appointed the top US diplomat/archivist/aid agency administrator to be interim national security adviser, some analysts were pointing out the problems with Rubio holding all these positions.
“Occupying two (or in Rubio’s case, three) roles at once is never ideal – directing government agencies and programs is a significant task that demands attention and focus,” said a post on the site of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, in March. “But Rubio’s current positions are uniquely concerning.”
The writer, Gabriella Cantor, pointed out the obvious conflict of interest: The archivist is supposed to ensure that other federal agencies, including the two Rubio is also leading, preserve records. Now, with the addition of the White House National Security Council, that becomes thornier.
As for the question of Rubio’s salary (or salaries), the state department did not reply when asked Thursday afternoon. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
