How Marco Rubio shifted from Trump critic to Trump champion

Tonya Mosley: [00:00:00] This is Fresh Air. I'm Tonya Mosley. Just after midnight on January 3, American Special Forces shot their way into a Venezuelan military complex and seized President Nicolas Maduro. At the press conference later that morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood quietly behind President Donald Trump, then stepped to the microphone to offer what journalist and my guest today, Dexter Filkins, describes as a familiar routine, lavishing praise on the president. Then explaining that the nighttime invasion of a sovereign nation was somehow completely ordinary. [00:00:35][35.5]
marco rubio: [00:00:36] And I hope what people now understand is that we have a president. The 47th president of the United States is not a game player. When he tells you that he's going to do something when he's good tells you he's going to address a problem. He means it. He actions it. I can tell you I've watched this process now for 14 15 years been around it. Everybody talks. I'm going to this. I'm gonna do that when I get there. We're going to Do this. We're gonna take this is a president of action. Like I don't understand yet how they haven't figured this out. And now if you don't know now, you know. [00:01:03][26.1]
Tonya Mosley: [00:01:04] In his new profile for the New Yorker, Filkins traces how Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants who built his career championing democracy and human rights, became the unlikely executor of Trump's foreign policy. One European diplomat told Filkins that if you listen closely to Rubio you sense that there's still a person in there somewhere underneath it. As he put it, a very thick layer of whatever it is that's covering him. Dexter Filkins is a staff writer at The New Yorker. And the author of The Forever War. He's reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, and conflict zones around the world. His new piece is called Power Trip, how Marco Rubio went from little Marco to Trump's foreign policy enabler. Our interview was recorded yesterday. Dexter, welcome back to the show. [00:01:51][47.8]
Dexter Filkins: [00:01:52] Thank you very much. [00:01:53][0.7]
Tonya Mosley: [00:01:54] Dexter, you've actually noticed a pattern at these press conferences. Rubio praises Trump and he explains why what just happened is actually ordinary. And in this case that we just heard, he was talking about the administration's actions in Venezuela. Walk me through what that has looked like over the last year and how it's evolved because at one time Rubio actually called President Trump a con artist. [00:02:19][25.0]
Dexter Filkins: [00:02:21] Yeah, this is quite a story. You know, my personal favorite, it's not in the story, but it was when President Trump was saying that he wanted to make Canada the 51st state. And then, you know, Rubio, he sent Rubio up there to meet the Canadians. And it was, you must have been painful for him to go up there. But he kind of shrugged and said, well, you know, the president, you have presidents expressed his opinion and you disagree with it. And Okay, we'll leave it at that. And so it's this kind of extraordinary thing that, like Venezuela, it's just an utterly extraordinary thing. And Rubio's job was to kind of make it look like it was just another day at the office. And that is his job. And I think what's remarkable about his personal story is that, as you mentioned, he spent his career in the Senate, and it's a distinguished career, being a champion for things like human rights and international law. And my gosh, I mean, the best example of this is Ukraine, when the Russians first invaded Crimea in 2014. Completely unprovoked invasion. It was Rubio. Rubio went to the Senate floor and he denounced the invasion and he called on the US government. You know, then it was the Obama administration to help the Ukrainians and to help with the Ukrainian democracy fend off this completely unprovoking attack. It's Rubio and that's what Rubio was... He was known for that and it was... Totally clear what he stood for. And I think what's happened to Rubio in the past year as he became Secretary of State is he's had a jettison a lot, if not most, if not all, of what he believes in. And, you know, anybody that signs up for somebody else's team, particularly in politics, has to do that. I mean, that's what kind of politics is. You kind of give and take a little bit here, but it's extreme in this case. It's extraordinary. He I think While I was researching this article and reporting this article, I remember I read, and there was a column by George Will, and George Will said, this is a man of flexible principles. And I have to confess, I kind of laughed out loud when I read that. But I don't know if his principles are flexible, but he's had to ditch a lot of what he believed then. [00:04:33][131.9]
Tonya Mosley: [00:04:33] Well, an example of that, I mean, yes, flexible principles, but there's in particular with Venezuela so many points of distinction. One of them I want to get to, there's this woman who was Venezuela's democratic opposition leader Maria Carina Machado. She was a woman who went into hiding after Maduro stole the election. She won the Nobel Peace Prize. She dedicated it to Trump. And the expectation was that when Maduro fell, she take over. But instead Trump has dismissed her. He's called her a very nice woman, but he also said she lacked the respect to lead and then turned to Maduro's vice president. How did this woman who once was Rubio's ally, from my understanding, actually end up on the outside? [00:05:19][46.1]
Dexter Filkins: [00:05:20] Oh, it's crushing. But as you said, she's an extraordinary woman and living and hiding in Venezuela after the election was stolen. There's not a lot of disagreement from anyone in the outside world that Maduro just ripped off the election. She wasn't the candidate. Gonzalez was the candidate, but she's the leader of the opposition. And she's she's denounced Maduro. Maduro is a terrible human being, and he denounced his regime in the strongest terms. And the Trump administration reached out to the Venezuelan opposition, which is Machado, but they had people here in the United States, in Miami, in Washington, and in Spain. And they were in contact with them every day. Rubio was in regular contact with the opposition. I spoke to the opposition before the invasion, and You know, they're ready to go and and I think. Whether they could have done it or were capable of kind of taking over it, but they were certainly led to believe that they were. And I think certainly, Secretary Rubio spoke on their behalf and advocated on their behalf and spoke very positively of them and their credentials and their principles and what they believe in. And it's democracy, it's us. And then they just got dropped. And then, you know, the invasion went forward. And then, I, you mentioned the press conference and Trump just kind of dismissed her with wave the hand and I think Venezuela now is Maduro 2.0. It's the very same people that President Trump and Secretary Rubio said were running drugs, running people into the United States, attacking the United States. And kind of, if you kind of buy into the argument that the cartels are terrorist organizations, those are the same guys that are running the country. And so it kind of raises all these questions, but more to the point, to get back to Secretary Rubio. None of this is what he claimed to stand for. [00:07:19][119.0]
Tonya Mosley: [00:07:21] President Trump mentioned something on Truth Social, where he reposted someone who called him the acting president of Venezuela. And I wanted to ask you about this parallel between the toppling of Maduro and the topple of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, because the president has said the problem that former President Bush had in Iraq is that he did not take the oil. So the difference with Venezuela is that the president is attempting to Take the oil. What has been the reaction to that? What has Rubio, if anything, said? Is he OK with the US taking that kind of control? [00:07:56][35.6]
Dexter Filkins: [00:07:58] Well, he's clearly okay with it. He's been very public in his declarations about that. I think, look, two different countries, two different wars. There's a couple of similarities, but they're pretty different. But I think there's one thing to kind of remember. So the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. It destroyed the state. It destroyed the Iraqi state, destroyed the Iraqi army. It destroyed the Ba'ath party. And the entire Iraqi state collapsed. And no, we didn't get the oil. And what resulted? Total and absolute chaos resulted in Iraq, and it took the United States, you know, trillions dollars and thousands of lives to basically put it back together again. And so I think, probably, I'm guessing, when they decided to knock off Maduro... Someone said, well, what about the army? What about the military? Can't we just bring in the Democrats? Can't just bring our friends? And I think any number of people, certainly people that I talked to said, you can't do that because the military is, you know, it's a giant criminal racket and they're doing everything from running drugs to running people and you can do that. And if you try to do that, you're gonna get chaos and you cant destroy the army because then you'll get chaos. And so basically what they decided was, okay, we'll just take Maduro out Like, we'll hand the keys to the... To the number two, you know, Dalcy Rodriguez. So I think that that's another way to look at it. But yeah, we've now basically taken ownership of the world's largest oil resources. And you know Trump has said, we're gonna, you're gonna make the people in Venezuela really rich, but he's also said we're going to take some for ourselves. So it's weird. It's just that we haven't done anything like this before. [00:09:35][97.1]
Tonya Mosley: [00:09:36] What do you think that we could see troops on the ground in Venezuela? [00:09:38][2.5]
Dexter Filkins: [00:09:41] I mean, that would be politically disastrous. I mean I think they went in and they knocked off Maduro and they took him out of there, but I don't think they're going back. I think that Rubio has been very clear about that, also very clear, about how they intend to control quotation marks around Venezuela. And he basically said, if they don't do what we tell them to do, we're going to blockade the oil again and their economy will collapse. And so that's basically it's... [00:10:09][27.1]
Tonya Mosley: [00:10:10] So you feel like that's a strong enough arm, because typically that is the strong arm, is military presence. [00:10:17][6.7]
Dexter Filkins: [00:10:18] Well that's the strongest arm they're willing to exert. Is that going to enable the United States to control Venezuela? I kind of doubt it. I don't think so. I think it's going to be really ugly. That's what I think. [00:10:28][10.1]
Tonya Mosley: [00:10:29] For the Venezuelan people, more than anything. [00:10:31][2.1]
Dexter Filkins: [00:10:31] I don't know about that, but I think whatever it is that the United States wants to do, it's going to be hard. It's going be like 50 times harder than they've imagined it. I mean, that's just the nature of these things. Can we do that from a distance, just threatening to blockade the royal? I find that a little hard to believe, maybe, but it's hard to predict. But I kind of doubt it. [00:10:52][21.2]
Tonya Mosley: [00:10:53] You lay out in this article that Rubio is possibly the most powerful American diplomat since Kissinger. And I mean, he's both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. His desk is steps from the Oval Office. And I'm just curious, where does he actually spend his days? [00:11:10][16.4]
Dexter Filkins: [00:11:11] He's rarely seen at the State Department where he's the Secretary of State. I think he spends most of his time at the White House. But I think what I meant by he's most powerful American foreign policy maker since, I mean, short of the president, since Kissinger on paper. You know, but Kissinger, if you look at Kissinger's career, he was extraordinary. He was, you know, globetrotting everywhere. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, made peace in the Middle East. Negotiated arms control with the Soviet Union, opened China to the world and to the West. It's extraordinary. He was active. He a change agent. He is way out front. And that, even though on paper that's what Rubio is, I think in practice, it's fair to say that he's nothing like that at all. And again, he's got a hard job. I mean, he has got to go to work in the morning and he's gotta try to do his best there and it's not an easy and he's got a lot of responsibilities but He's basically support staff for the president and kind of cheerleader and enabler, and that's a very different role from what somebody like Kissinger. [00:12:17][66.3]
Tonya Mosley: [00:12:19] And you learned some of that, that he's a cheerleader from the sources that you talked to, because you spoke with many people. But there's one note that I highlighted here where a former official told you that the president mostly just talks. He doesn't listen to anything from anyone. So what is Rubio's role? I mean, how big of an influence does he have on the president? [00:12:39][20.5]
Dexter Filkins: [00:12:40] Well, that's the $64,000 question. And I spoke to a lot of people who know him, particularly a lot diplomats and European diplomats, people who have worked with him, and they can very easily imagine themselves in a similar position because they often are themselves. And that is, you've signed up for somebody else's program, so what can you do? And the answer is you do what you can, and you kind of make a difference where you can. And I think in Rubio's case, it appears to be... Mostly at the margins, but not entirely. I mean, I think like this administration, like many others, I think if you open the door and peer into the White House, it's a knife fight in there. Everybody's trying to get the president's attention. And so I point this out in the piece. I thought one of the most interesting moments is Ukraine. And so the president has been kind of all over the map on Ukraine. But President Trump is kind of deputized in this very strange role. He's deputize Stephen Witkoff. [00:13:39][59.5]
Tonya Mosley: [00:13:40] And explain who Witkoff is for those who don't know. [00:13:43][2.4]
Dexter Filkins: [00:13:44] Wyckoff is an old friend of Trump's. He's a real estate guy from New York. I mean, to be honest, everyone I spoke to said, basically, he doesn't appear to know very much about foreign affairs, but he's a dealmaker. And so Trump put him in this job and basically gave him the most important parts of what would otherwise be the portfolio of the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor. So Steve, you take Ukraine, you Take Gaza. You know, take these intractable problems and, and try to solve them for me. And so what I tried to point out in my piece was, uh, there's a particular moment and this is kind of all unfolded over time, but it's, but it's very recent, uh where, and we're kind of, we're still in the middle of it and it's pretty clear. I, from my reporting that, you know Wyckoff kind of flew out to Moscow. It doesn't look like he was very well prepared for that or kind of briefed by anyone. But he, apparently, this is what US senators have said and what many people have been told is that he was basically handed this 28-point peace plan, which is basically for Ukraine, which is, basically, Putin's, Moscow's wish list, you know, give us these giant chunks of territory that reduce the size of your army, et cetera, et, cetera. And Wyckoff just took it back to Trump and said, okay, I think I got a deal. And I think it's pretty clear, and I think, I lay this out in the piece, I has done. Everything in his power to prevent that from happening, that deal. He's tried to torpedo that deal, and I think he's been successful. And so that's a great example of where the White House is divided on the question of Ukraine. Wyckoff just wants to basically wash the United States' hands of it, get rid of Ukraine, dump it, and move on. And Ruby, I just want to do that. No one has said that out loud, but I think based on the reporting I did, I thought that was pretty clear. [00:15:40][116.4]
Tonya Mosley: [00:15:42] You know, one of the more memorable or haunting moments in your piece is when Rubio was sitting silently as President Trump and Vice President Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on live television. And what did people who know Rubio say about that moment afterward? [00:16:06][24.2]
Dexter Filkins: [00:16:08] Well, yeah, it's, I think probably most of your listeners have seen the clip, but it's an extraordinary moment. When President Zelensky came from Ukraine and, you know, his country's under attack. It's been invaded. They're trying to kill him in particular. And they took him into the Oval Office and I think made the mistake of keeping the cameras on. Just started to berate him. I think I remember, I think, I quoted in the piece, everybody will remember this, but Vice President Vance said, you know, you haven't even thanked us once. And it all became about you're so ungrateful. And if you watch that meeting, Rubio is ashen-faced. He's sitting silently with his hands folded in his lap, staring straight ahead, looking absolutely stricken. And I'm certainly not the only I'm the one who noticed, I meant, you know... I remember Congressman Eric Swalwell said, we all saw you sinking into your chair. And I think that's an example of, again, when you take a job like this, you have to decide how much of your really, really strongly held convictions you're gonna be willing to kind of either compromise on or lose altogether. And I think, I mean, that's how politics works, but it's also, this is a very extreme case of that. So, here's [00:17:30][81.6]
Tonya Mosley: [00:17:30] Well, yeah, I mean, there's a president who, you know, I think it might be safe to say that in our lifetime, we have never experienced a president operating in the way that President Trump does. And there was actually this moment just last week at the White House that felt like an illustration of so much of what you write about in this article. So, there's this meeting with oil executives and Rubio passed Trump a note. On television. It was a session with oil and gas leaders to discuss Venezuela's oil reserves. And the note appears to be Rubio trying to get the president back on track, to talk to Chevron. But instead of reading it silently, President Trump reads it out loud. And I wanna play a bit of that, let's listen. [00:18:22][51.6]
Speaker 4: [00:18:22] One way or the other, you're all going to do very well. I think really very well, Marco just gave me a note. Go back to Chevron. They want to discuss something. Go ahead. I'm going back to Chevy. Thank you, Marco. Was there a question, Mr. President? Yes, go ahead, Marco, what was it? What are you saying here? [00:18:40][18.1]
Tonya Mosley: [00:18:42] That was the president during an oil executive meeting last week after Rubio passed him a note. We don't know exactly what Rubio was thinking when he passed them that note, but it appears to be just a nod for the president to go back to Chevron to continue the conversation. What do you make of that scene? What does it really illustrate? [00:19:02][19.4]
Dexter Filkins: [00:19:03] Well, I mean, the whole meeting was a little odd in the sense that it was President Trump basically saying, like, Venezuela is now open for business, you're all going to do very well, which feels a little ugly to me, because again, just a month ago, we were talking about this drug running, human trafficking government that we're going to get rid of and now it's the same guys. And so now we're gonna make money with them. Yeah. And I mean, look, the president has a hard job and, you know, he's all over the place a lot, but I think he's got to keep track of a lot. So I think Rubio in that case was just trying to kind of bring him back to probably what they were trying to do. And in this case, I think it's Chevron. You know, Chevron has operated in Venezuela before, and they're trying to get back in. And so they had a lot to discuss there. But I just felt like... Yeah, it's tough and it's, it' tough to be Rubio in a position like that. Yeah, he handed a note to the president that he thought was private and the president read it out loud. I mean, it was like, uh, you know, and he probably didn't expect that. [00:20:06][62.6]
Tonya Mosley: [00:20:07] Dexter, I wanna talk a little bit about Rubio's origin story. His parents were Cuban immigrants. What did you find out about them and the way that he grew up? [00:20:16][9.2]
Dexter Filkins: [00:20:18] Well, he's from a particular, it's a very particular world, Miami, Cuba and Miami in particular. I mean, Miami is an incredible, God, it is an amazing city. It's one of the really great cities in America. But he came out of that and he identifies with his roots and with the Caribbean and with Latin America. And I think as someone said to me, who knows him really well said, he believes that countries like Venezuela and Argentina. In Colombia are great countries and they should be great and they should be better. And his whole life is about identifying with that region and trying to kind of build greater links with the United States his whole career. [00:20:57][38.8]
Tonya Mosley: [00:20:58] Well, you write that hostility toward leftist regimes in Latin America is kind of like a birthright for Rubio. And I wanted to know, what does that mean in particular for how he approaches Venezuela? [00:21:11][12.8]
Dexter Filkins: [00:21:12] I mean, it almost goes without saying, but as a Cuban-American, his parents didn't flee Castro, they left before Castro, but Miami is filled with people who fled the Castro regime. And so that is intense hostility, it's lifelong hostility. And Maduro is basically the sister regime to the communist regime in Cuba. And, so it's quite natural. So I think there are kind of three of them that are on the map, and it's Cuba. Venezuela and then Nicaragua, and those are the kind of the three leftist regimes in Latin America. And so I think that it's quite natural for Rubio to have a deep hostility towards the Maduro regime. It's very well established. And when Trump offered him the job as secretary of state, he said, like, what do you want to focus on? He said, I want to focus in Latin America. I want that to be mine. [00:22:02][49.3]
Tonya Mosley: [00:22:02] Rubio has written two books that they kind of read like they were written by different people. I mean, in 2013, there was An American Son, which was a memoir. It's this optimistic immigrant story about hard work and family values. And then a decade later, there's Decades of Decadence, which you describe as angry, at times shrill. It rails against elites and Marxist Democrats. What happened in between? Is that a genuine shift or is it strategic? [00:22:36][33.8]
Dexter Filkins: [00:22:38] Well, it's easy to answer what happened between Donald Trump happened between. So basically, you know, Marco Rubio came into the Senate in 2010, and he very quickly decided to run for president and he ran for president in 2016. And your listeners, some of them will recall that the sparring between Trump and Rubio during the campaign was like the most colorful moments. You know, Marcos saying, well, you've got small hands, you know, and Trump calling him little Marco. But what happened was, you know, Rubio was a kind of old school Republican, you know, kind of country club, uh, anti-communist Ronald Reagan, Republican, and President Trump or then candidate Trump, he swept all that away. The party is completely transformed. And so I think it's fair to say that Rubio transformed himself to keep up with them. [00:23:24][46.2]
Tonya Mosley: [00:23:25] Speaking of Rubio's presidential run, I just want to situate people to that time period. So if we go back to 2013, Rubio is this rising Republican senator. He's the face of what was a bipartisan immigration reform plan, a group of eight senators who put together a bill that actually passed the Senate. Time put him on the cover as the Republican savior. Then he walked away from his own legislation after visiting New Hampshire to test his presidential chances. I just want to reorient us to that time period about the reaction from fellow Republicans at that time. What was the consensus? What was idea and the thought when people were thinking about Rubio as the potential Republican savior? [00:24:12][47.4]
Dexter Filkins: [00:24:13] I mean, it's the last great attempt in Congress, in the Senate, to reform the immigration system. And they were very, very close to a compromise. It was being put together by eight senators, called the gang of eight, of which Rubio was one. He was the Latino Republican. But it was at the same time that the Republican Party was changing very fast, and the right wing of the party was surging very quickly. And I think, I think it's fair to say from my reporting that Rubio, who supported the legislation, supported the reform. He sensed that, he sensed what was happening, saw that the weather was changing. And then he backed away. And when he backed away, the legislation fell apart, the reform effort collapsed, and it's never been revisited since. And so you have people like Lindsey Graham, John McCain at the time, the Republicans who were with him, who were supporting the reform, I think it's fair to say they were disgusted by him. They were deeply disappointed. They said, you know, he caved! You know, he basically caved to Rush Limbaugh, you know, on the right-wing radio and he, you know wears his spine and so it was a very interesting moment in Marco's career. [00:25:20][66.8]
Tonya Mosley: [00:25:21] A political figure in Miami told you, quote, the one constant in his career talking about Rubio is that he has betrayed every mentor and every principle he's ever had in order to claim power for himself. That is such a brutal assessment. I just want to know if you found anything that contradicts that. Has that been a mode and a way of operating through this world to gain power for Rubio? Or was there a shift in that time period when Trump happened that we saw him start to betray his, his prior values. [00:25:56][35.0]
Dexter Filkins: [00:25:58] Well, gosh, it's hard to know. I mean, if you were really, really cynical, you would say that he believes what he needs to believe. But I think that's a fundamental question, which is what would Marco Rubio go to the wall for? Like, you know, what hill would he die on? I can't answer that question. I didn't find it. I couldn't find the hill. And that's, you now, in a way, that's the life of a politician. But in a ways, it's not. You know, good politicians in the end, I mean the best, the ones we Remember and respect. They lead and they get out in front and they take positions that aren't necessarily popular and they say like Darn it, this is why I believe this, follow me. And sometimes a great personal peril, and I think it's fair to say Ruby, there aren't a lot of moments like that in his career. [00:26:42][43.8]
Tonya Mosley: [00:26:43] I want you to remind us that when President Trump took office, his administration moved pretty quickly at the State Department, fired many people, froze aid, entire bureaus gutted, memos that demanded loyalty. Take us inside for a moment. What did it actually look like? [00:27:02][19.2]
Dexter Filkins: [00:27:03] Well, they did. I mean, they do everything you just said they did, so they took USAID, which is the big aid agency, which provides, you know, thousands and thousands of programs around the world for AIDS victims, for people stricken by famine, all of those things. And they began to either throw them out or get rid of them. But more than that, they fired, I don't remember the exact number, but they fired a huge number of of diplomats. And they put in place, as every administration does, but they put in place a group of people who I think it's fair to say, the type of which have never been in the State Department before. And one person who was there, one former diplomat who I've known for 20 years, he said it was like, it felt like year zero when the Kimmer Rouge took over. And he described one meeting where he said, you know, they were checking IDs. And it's like, if you were kind of, you know, if he were the old regime, you didn't get in the door. And so that's what it felt like on the inside year zero. [00:28:02][58.9]
Tonya Mosley: [00:28:04] The memos, they were sent in Rubio's name, right? There's one in particular urging employees to report colleagues for anti-Christian bias and it asks for names and dates and locations. This reads like something from an authoritarian playbook. [00:28:18][14.5]
Dexter Filkins: [00:28:20] That's weird. [00:28:20][0.3]
Tonya Mosley: [00:28:21] Did Rubio actually authorize that? [00:28:23][1.7]
Dexter Filkins: [00:28:24] I mean, it certainly went out under his name and he's in charge of the department. There's another one that, it's a memo that goes out that says, you know, bonus points for I think the phrase they used is fealty to the secretary, the sort of loyalty to the secretary. If you demonstrate that, you get kind of, you got a gold star. And that's, uh, you know, that went out under Rubio's name, um, and that's uh... Just never had stuff like that. It doesn't read like anything in recent American history does, or certainly a history of American diplomacy. Fealty to the secretary, or please report like Christian bias. Yeah, those are brand new. [00:29:08][44.6]
Tonya Mosley: [00:29:09] You actually also tell this story, there's this moment where Rubio visits the embassy in Guatemala and he tells staffers there that he didn't know about the aid cuts and doesn't like them. And then weeks later he tells Congress the opposite, that he personally made the cuts and he went line by line through spreadsheets. Then privately he tells senators he'll try to reverse them. What's actually true? [00:29:35][25.6]
Dexter Filkins: [00:29:37] That's a pretty amazing moment, which I, you know, kind of stumbled on. But everything you said was just correct. So he went to Guatemala, where the United States spends a lot of money, like tens of millions of dollars. But most of it was directed at helping to kind of stem the flow of migrants, ultimately, to the United states. So it was kind of economic development stuff. But they did stuff, you, know, like border checks, passport Thanks. And Rubio, it was his first trip. An office, he went to Central America and he went to the embassy there and he met everyone and he kind of made this announcement and he said, look, this is, it had already been announced the USAID was going to be abolished, but he said basically what he said according to people who were there was kind of, God, I'm really sorry about this. I didn't know about it. I wouldn't have, you know, I wouldn't have, I didn't sign off on it. Literally like a couple of weeks later, I mean, the people in embassy staffs, of course they were devastated, but the... A couple weeks later in front of Congress, he said, I did this. He said, I sat in a hotel room in Guatemala. I went through it line by line. I cut that. And you compare those two things and it's kind of, it's shocking. I mean, I don't know what the truth is, honestly. I mean I, all I can do is take those two completely opposite statements of his and kind of run them next to each other. [00:30:53][76.3]
Tonya Mosley: [00:30:55] Thinking about that bigger picture stepping back, something you said earlier when you talked about the United States place and the larger world stage, you spoke with Tom Shannon who served as a diplomat for 34 years. And he made this surprising comparison and I want you to kind of break it down a little bit. He says disillusionment with foreign policy goes back to Iraq and Afghanistan. And then he compares. What the president has said to the messages of 68 with Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. And Cesar Chavez, all of whom opposed Vietnam because they believed resources should go to problems at home, and he says that Trump is making a version of the same argument. What do you make of that comparison? [00:31:41][46.1]
Dexter Filkins: [00:31:42] Well, I thought I had this long conversation with Tom Shannon, who's a former ambassador. He was ambassador to Brazil. He's now retired. It was the most interesting conversation I had in the story. He said pretty much what you said. He said, look, the last 20 years have been very, very hard. And we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spent trillions of dollars. And what do we get in return? We got dead kids. Uh... Then you throw in the financial crisis on top of that and so the same people are sending their children off to die or like losing their homes because they're being foreclosed on and so of course the support for for america's role in the world has come under question under criticism and and that's basically what he pointed out and he said look the united states spends a lot of money to support these alliance systems and to intervene around the world more or less wherever it wants to. In support of this kind of, you know, the world order such as it is. And he's like, what are we getting in return for that? And it's a fair question. And that's when he invoked the comparison in 1968. He said, I think there's echoes of this, that Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, they looked at Vietnam and they said, you knows, thousands of Americans dying there. And they said what are doing? You know, why are we sending all this money abroad? But more than that, it's distracting us from our domestic problems. And so I thought, you know, he kind of flipped the whole script and I thought it was just very illuminating because I think he, Tom Shannon, speaks for a lot of people in the United States. [00:33:08][86.3]
Tonya Mosley: [00:33:10] Dexter, we started this conversation talking about Venezuela, and your piece lays out all the complications to that raid, to Maduro being seized. There's the corrupt military that will resist this constraint. There are these guerrilla armies on the border. There's oil infrastructure that could take years and lots and lots of money, a hundred billion dollars to rebuild. There's this quote where a source told you, if it all falls apart... Rubio will get the blame. What does success even look like there? And if it happens, will Rubio get the credit? [00:33:47][37.2]
Dexter Filkins: [00:33:49] I think we can't answer that question yet. My very distinct sense is that they wanted to get rid of Maduro. Maduro is a bad guy. He's a bad actor. This is clear now that they thought, look, this is the most oil rich country in the entire world and it's all basically closed off. Let's open it up. But beyond that, I don't think they really thought they haven't thought through it. I think they're doing it on the fly. That's my personal impression based on the reporting that I've done, that they're winging it. [00:34:18][28.8]
Tonya Mosley: [00:34:19] I'm just astounded that you could say that an administration is just winging it on matters of this importance. [00:34:26][7.7]
Dexter Filkins: [00:34:27] Well, we've seen this before. I mean, I was in Baghdad in 2003, but the... [00:34:34][6.8]
Tonya Mosley: [00:34:35] You feel like we were winging it in 2003? [00:34:36][1.1]
Dexter Filkins: [00:34:37] We were absolutely winging it in 2003, and that's why it took us more than a decade to get out of there. But my sense is that the plan is sort of changing by the day. So I mean, and this is the way it is with Trump, you know, he's like an improv artist. And so anything could happen. I mean tomorrow Maria Machado could be on a podium and they're saying we're sending her back to take over Venezuela. I don't, you're the Democratic leader. Anything could happen there. And I think... But they have their priorities, and it's clear what the priorities are. The priorities are to get rid of Maduro and then basically open up the oil industry. And so you have the same regime in place, the same bunch of gangsters that were there before are there now, except, you know, I hate to say this, but there are gangsters. And so beyond that, it's hard to say. I mean, what's this going to look like a year from now or five years from now? You know, that's a fool's game. [00:35:31][54.7]
Tonya Mosley: [00:35:33] You talked with folks who gave a brutal assessment of the future for Rubio. You talked to one person who said they hope that his career is ruined. What is the future that you think Rubio is headed towards? Because you also report that some see Venezuela as part of a longer play, that toppling Maduro could make Rubio a hero in Miami and set him up for 2028. [00:35:55][22.6]
Dexter Filkins: [00:35:57] Yeah, I mean, as on every other question in public life in America now, there's no unanimity. Rubio could absolutely be president of the United States. I mean look at Rubio. He's incredibly smart. He is very well read. He was extremely articulate. He does his work. And so, absolutely, and I think he's very ambitious and he's run for president before against Trump, and I think he wants to be president again. Going to have to see how that plays out. I think the conversations you refer to super interesting. And, you know, it's in Miami, if you live in Miami. The dream has long been, look, if they knock off Maduro, Cuba is going to fall too. And then Nick Rogge was going to fall. And Cuba, the regime in Cuba, and it's, you know, economically it's a basket case. They've been getting 50,000 barrels of oil from Venezuela every day for years. That's going to dry up if it already hasn't. So what's gonna happen at that regime? So I think there's a sense, certainly among people that have known Rubio for a long time, that if Venezuela went and Cuba goes and maybe Nicaragua goes, he's gonna be remembered certainly in Miami until the end of time as the great liberator of Cuba. But I think he's an ambitious guy and we haven't seen the last of him. [00:37:22][84.8]
Tonya Mosley: [00:37:23] Well, this week foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland are going to meet with Rubio and Vice President JD Vance. What will you be watching for? [00:37:32][9.2]
Dexter Filkins: [00:37:33] Well, I think what's interesting to me, the most interesting thing to me is not apart from the sort of the question of Greenland itself, which is, you know, insane. But I think that Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio do not see the world in the same way. They are very, very divided on how they see the word. And I think Rubio in his heart believes what he always believed, you the kind of the Ronald Reagan, you stand up for foreign rights, you fight communism, you go abroad, you're the leader of the free world. I think Rubio believes that. J.D. Vance doesn't believe any of that, I mean, he doesn't believe any other, and you know, he wants to bring it all home. And he's, he said that, like, you know about Ukraine, I don't particularly care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other. Um, and so that's to me, what's so interesting is that they represent the two camps, the two warring camps inside the White House, and that's what's, so interesting to me watching the, the way that they conduct foreign policy. [00:38:26][53.4]
Tonya Mosley: [00:38:28] What's the plan for Greenland as you understand it? I mean, you use the phrase, it's insane, but like, lay out for us. We've heard Trump kind of float Greenland many times, but for those who don't follow this to wrap our heads around what is actually happening. [00:38:45][16.9]
Dexter Filkins: [00:38:47] Well, Greenland is, you know, it's an island in the West, giant, you know, ice-covered island in Western Hemisphere. It has a tiny population. I know it's like 50,000 people or something. But it's Danish. It always has been, or for quite a long time. It's Danish, it is part of Denmark. Denmark is part of NATO. And there's an American base in Greenland. And so, President Trump has all but declared that he wants Greenland for the United States. And I think he has said, we'll use military force if we need to, which can only be described as insane. And the reason I say that is that the Danes are like, they're fantastic allies. After 9-11, their soldiers, Danish soldiers went to Afghanistan, they died in Afghanistan, they went to Iraq, they die in Iraq. They are fantastic allies, they would do anything for the United States, to do anything to hold NATO together. And so. I think, I mean, it seems rather obvious, as has been said, but if Trump wants to militarize Greenland to kind of keep the Chinese and the Russians at bay in the Arctic Circle, the Danes would be the, they'd line up to let them do it. And they're game, you know, and they've always been game. They're really good allies. They're a really good friends. And that's the part I fundamentally don't understand. [00:40:04][77.4]
Tonya Mosley: [00:40:05] Yeah, in this case, what's notable here is that the foreign minister of Denmark and the counterpart in Greenland actually requested this meeting with Rubio because of what Trump has been saying over these threats to take over Greenland. It hasn't even been some sort of conversation that those administrations have been having with each other. [00:40:27][21.7]
Dexter Filkins: [00:40:29] It'll be an interesting meeting. They're going to sit with Rubio and I'm sure they're going to speak their minds and say, like, what on earth are you talking about? Or what on earth is your president talking about, and so it's going to be hard for Rubio because, again, his very, very difficult task is he has to be loyal to the president. But I think he's going try to reassure the Danes that, you know, they're not going to wake up one morning and find the 101st Airborne Division in the middle of Greenland. [00:40:53][23.8]
Tonya Mosley: [00:40:55] You mentioned previous wars you've covered, where officials were winging it. You've reported on wars in diplomacy for decades. You were in Iraq when it fell apart. What does this moment feel like to you, this hollowing out of American diplomacy? Is there a historical parallel that comes to mind? [00:41:14][19.9]
Dexter Filkins: [00:41:16] Well, the historical parallels 1930s. And that's why it kind of freaks me out. That's the last time the United States withdrew from the world. It was after the first World War. We had enough. We're going home. And then the world fell apart. You know, without American leadership, the world fall apart. And, you know, maybe you don't want to lead the world, but the world needs you. And we all know what happened after that. We had World War II in which 70 million people died. Are we facing a similar moment to that? I think we are, not the World War, but we are watching the kind of American-built order be dismantled. And what comes after that? And that keeps me up a little at night. [00:42:02][46.1]
Tonya Mosley: [00:42:04] Dexter, Filkins, thank you so much for this conversation and for your reporting. [00:42:07][3.5]
Dexter Filkins: [00:42:08] Thank you, thanks so much. [00:42:09][1.0]
[2446.5]

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.