A host of MSNBC’s flagship weekend show suggested on Saturday that President Donald Trump picked former Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state as an act of ritual humiliation.
Former RNC Chair Michael Steele, who co-hosts MSNBC’s The Weekend, was chatting with Susan Del Percio, a GOP strategist, when the issue came up on Saturday morning’s broadcast.
“I’ve always looked at Donald Trump selecting [Rubio] as a way to punk the hell out of him,” Steele said. “Because this is a guy who has a core.”
“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.”
As an example, the MSNBC host pointed to Rubio’s recent decision to fire roughly 60 government contractors working on issues related to pressuring the Chinese government to end forced labor camps for China’s persecuted Uyghur Muslim minority.
“In the Senate, Rubio was a lead sponsor of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which had brought support from both parties in Congress,” he said
He added, “Those issues are no longer a priority because they aren’t a priority for this president. What do you make of this? I call it the punking of Republicans by Trump to get them to do the things that they know they would never do otherwise.”
