Marco Rubio emerges as key Trump power player after Venezuela operation

By Fox News · Fox News

Early in the second Trump administration, analysts openly wondered how long Secretary of State Marco Rubio ’s relationship with President Donald Trump would last. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has long embraced a Cold War–inflected, hawkish approach to foreign policy that initially appeared at odds with Trump’s worldview. Trump had been deeply skeptical of U.S. involvement in Ukraine and surrounded himself with prominent anti-interventionist voices, including Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Shortly after Trump won the election in 2024, Pete Hegseth, then set to become secretary of war, described himself as a "recovering neocon." TRUMP’S VENEZUELA STRIKE SPARKS CONSTITUTIONAL CLASH AS MADURO IS HAULED INTO US But in 2026, Rubio sits at the apex of his career, emerging as one of the most influential figures in Washington. He holds two additional titles: national security advisor and head of the National Archives. The last person to serve as the nation's chief diplomat and national security advisor was Henry Kissinger, widely seen as the architect of foreign policy during the Nixon administration. "He's just really smart, really effective, and he's succeeded at everything he's done," Matt Kroenig, a former Pentagon official and current vice president at the Atlantic Council think tank, told Fox News Digital. "He doesn’t see his job as containing Trump. He understands who the boss is and channels those instincts into constructive directions." The man of many hats has pursued the fall of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro for nearly a decade. "I think that U.S. armed forces should only be used in cases of national security threats," Rubio said in a 2018 interview with Univision. "I think there is a strong argument that can be made right now that Venezuela and Maduro’s regime have become a threat to the region and to the U.S." On Jan. 3, Rubio got his wish, when special operators descended on Caracas, Venezuela, to snat…