Marco Rubio has used Donald Trump’s trip to China to publicly trash America’s longstanding allies in Europe.
The secretary of state spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity aboard Air Force One en route to Beijing on Wednesday, and moaned that his own assumptions about NATO had turned out to be false.
The president has expressed his anger at European countries that have blocked their airspace or ruled out the use of airbases as staging posts for Trump’s war on Iran. Spain and Italy, in particular, have infuriated President Trump with restrictions on aircraft used in the conflict.
“The problem with NATO, unfortunately—and I’ve been a supporter of NATO throughout my career in the Senate,” Rubio explained. “And one of the reasons I supported NATO is it gave us basing rights.
“It allowed us to have bases in Europe, that we could use in a contingency, like something in the Middle East, you know, where you could have planes flying from some country in Europe and actually protecting our national interest in the Middle East, as an example, or Africa.
“And so, when you have NATO partners denying you the use of those bases, when the primary reason that NATO is good for America is now being denied to us by Spain, as an example, then what’s the purpose of the alliance?”
Spain closed its airspace to all U.S. planes involved in the Iran war, having already said it would not allow Washington to fly out of its jointly operated Rota and Morón bases.
Trump also called France’s unwillingness to get involved “very unhelpful,” and in relation to the war, made a bizarre personal jab at President Emmanuel Macron.
“And then I called up Macron, whose wife treats him extremely badly. He’s still recovering from that right to jaw,” Trump said, referencing an incident where Macron’s wife Brigitte’s hand appeared to make contact with his face as they stood in the entrance of an aircraft.
The response from European leaders has been widely defiant, and Macron’s response was cutting.
“This is not a show. We are talking about war and peace and the lives of men and women,” he said in April. “When you want to be serious, you don’t say every day the opposite of what you said the day before. And maybe you shouldn’t be speaking every day. You should just let things quieten down.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez adopted an equally no-nonsense tone, saying, “You cannot respond to one illegality with another, because that’s how humanity’s great disasters begin.”
Meanwhile, Britain’s PM Keir Starmer allowed the use of bases but drew a line in the sand for any further involvement, saying, “Let me say once again: this is not our war. We will not be drawn into the conflict. That is not in our national interest.
“And the most effective way we can support the cost of living in Britain is to push for de-escalation in the Middle East and a re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which is such a vital route for energy.”
NATO’s Article 5, a commitment to collective defense, states that “an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against them all.” In the eyes of most member states, this is not what has happened when Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched joint strikes on Iran.
Rubio’s comments on his way to China come after a strange dispute about whether he’d actually be allowed into the country.
He was sanctioned by Beijing twice after he championed human rights there while serving as a senator, and he was also barred from entering the country.
Now China appears to have found a diplomatic workaround. The AFP News agency cited two diplomats who said that since Rubio became secretary of state, China has changed the transliteration of his name in Mandarin, allowing it to bypass the original sanctions order.
On Tuesday, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said, “The sanctions target Mr. Rubio’s words and deeds when he served as a U.S. senator concerning China.”
Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said via state media that she “had not noticed it but would look into it.”
