Rubio: 'We're Not Doing Idiotic Things Anymore'

Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared on Donald Trump, Jr.'s podcast, "Triggered with Don Jr.," on Tuesday evening, and he had a lot of interesting things to say. And as he does, he explained them in a way that is rational and makes sense — something I'm still getting used to after the last four years.

First up on the agenda was the Supreme Court's Monday night ruling on President Donald Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).

In case you missed the news, the high court essentially determined that Trump could use AEA with some guidelines, including that deportees must be notified of their deportations "in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs."

I know many of our readers were upset over this, but Rubio pointed out that the most important thing to come out of this ruling is that "you have to go before the judge wherever those people are being held before they’re sent abroad." In other words, someone who is detained in Texas can't go looking for a more liberal or sympathetic judge in, say, Washington, D.C. to appeal their deportation. Here's more on that from Rubio:

Because right now, what was happening is these activists were basically just finding a court – they would find – they’d forum shop. They’d find, 'Where can I find a friendly federal judge that gives me the highest probability of victory in court?' So you have over 600-something District Court judges, and so you have a guy in New Jersey or a guy in New York or a guy in D.C. basically enjoining the entire country. I mean, one of these federal judges has the power to stop the entire federal government in all 50 states and every one of our territories.
And so I think the most important thing the court said is, number one, if you want to fight these things, you have to fight it in the jurisdiction where they’re being sent from or being held – in this case, Texas – which clearly, for whatever reason, these lawyers, they don’t want to go to Texas to file it, right?
And then the other is just the power of the federal government to conduct foreign policy. We have a judge right now that is basically trying to order the federal government, the Executive Branch, to bring people back. In essence, they are trying to order us to go to the president of El Salvador and tell him you must now send people back to us. So we can’t live in a country – it’s just not constitutional – where judges are now conducting the foreign policy of the United States.

Rubio also reiterated that the Trump administration is using the AEA to kick some really bad guys out of the country, despite what you might read from the liberal media. "...[I]t’s almost automatically assumed that if you are somehow removed from this country you are a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.... You read these articles; these are the greatest people who have ever lived, who just somehow all happen to be illegally in our country."

Rubio also spoke up on something he's alluded to lately: how mass migration is potentially being weaponized by other countries. In recent weeks, the secretary of State has suggested that perhaps the Nicolás Maduro regime that has taken over Venezuela is currently sending criminals, like members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), to the United States to destabilize us. Maduro and his group of thugs will tell you TdA no longer exists, but it's long been suspected that he's actually working with them, using them to kill people he perceives as a threat and sending them to other countries to wreak havoc. It's something that Rubio said is "right out of Fidel Castro's playbook."

In the case of Tren de Aragua, that was a prison gang inside of Venezuela. The Venezuelan regime pushed them out of the country knowing that many of them – first of all, they destabilized all kind of countries neighboring in the region, but ultimately wound their way up here to the United States. And we saw that trend begin probably in January of 2023 we started to see uptick in people arriving.
It was actually Venezuelans that were telling me this. People here in the country, they were saying, look, these people that are coming now, they’re members of gangs. And at first you kind of think, well, how do you really know? But they were right. They were absolutely right. And we started to see that. And you started to see them in the unlikeliest places. It wasn’t like they were all coming to Miami. They actually were going to places like Chicago and New York and Aurora, Colorado, and sprinkled all over the country. And then the crimes began.
So there’s no doubt that this was a concerted effort by the Maduro regime not just to drive these gang members out of their country but to drive them towards the United States and to inflict a price on this country.

Just for VIP Members: The Truth Behind Tren de Aragua

Much of the rest of the podcast focused on the failed policies of the Joe Biden administration. Rubio said that when handling foreign policy, you have no choice but to deal with bad people, but "the problem is you can’t do it in a stupid way, and that’s what the Biden people did." He essentially blamed Biden for the fact that Maduro is running Venezuela now, and likened the reason why to a real estate deal in which someone sells a piece of property but gets to keep the money and the property in the end.

They went to Maduro and they said, okay, we’re going to do a deal. You promise to hold elections, free and fair elections in like nine months or whatever, and we will immediately lift sanctions and allow you to start producing oil and getting paid for it. It was a side deal, by the way, because they didn’t – they only announced that they did this deal with Chevron. What they didn’t announce was that Chevron – with a side, secret deal – was allowed to pay the Maduro regime royalties. It accounted for over 25 percent of all the revenue going into that regime from oil.
So they did that deal. Well, they didn’t have – you talked about the election. The election was fake. They didn’t have an election. And after that, after that, they left the deal in place. They left it in place, even though they violated their word on holding free and fair elections. I think the way – if they were going to do it – and I don’t think at this point you can do it – you say first you have free and fair elections, then we’ll lift the sanctions. And then we’ll – but they – and even if you do it the way that the Biden people did, at least if they don’t – if they break their word, undo the thing. Stop getting – allowing them to get money. But they didn’t do any of that.

If you've been paying attention to Rubio's travels, you'll notice he's been spending a lot of time in the Western Hemisphere, traveling to Central America and the Caribbean and visiting with our allies. Many have compared it to the Monroe Doctrine. Again, Rubio blames the Biden administration, saying it essentially ignored or mistreated our allies in the region while making deals and rewarding "irritant" countries.

Rubio appears to be correcting that course by visiting these countries and offering his reassurance. Our new and improved relationship with El Salvador is one example of that. Rubio said Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is very pro-U.S. and a big fan of our current president. A few years ago, Biden reportedly wouldn't even meet with Bukele because he (or whoever was running the show) was afraid it would make it him look bad.

Trump and Rubio talked about a number of other topics, ranging from revoking student visas to stopping DEI hiring practices, but ultimately, Rubio's message throughout the entire interview was something he said near the end: "We're not doing idiotic things anymore." He was talking specifically about allowing people here on visas who just want to "disrupt and create riots in our streets and on our campuses," but it felt more like the entire theme of the conversation.

And he praised Donald Trump and the entire administration for working together cohesively toward the goals, though he joked that "we work for someone that apparently has found a way to fit 27 hours in a 24-hour day in terms of how he works." But he added that it was exciting to be a part of it. "We truly feel like we are making changes and decisions today in the positions we’re in that are going to dramatically improve our country and life in America for two generations," he said.

I highly recommend checking out the entire podcast if you can. Here's a link to the video on Rumble.

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