There is an old Iraqi joke from the days of Saddam Hussein: A journalist asks Tariq Aziz, his deputy foreign minister, “Can elephants fly?” He answers, “Of course they can’t fly.” The journalist follows up: “But the president just said elephants can fly.” “Oh, yes,” Aziz says without missing a beat, “but only very slowly.”
The point of the joke was to make fun of how competent officials corrupt their credibility to remain in favor with strongman rulers. President Donald Trump is not Saddam, of course — Trump won elections legitimately. His tendency to run roughshod over bureaucratic norms and systems has less to do with autocracy than frustration with a moribund and dysfunctional bureaucracy. Nor would Trump be the first president to be intolerant toward dissent from among his own appointees. There is a happy medium in leadership. Former President George W. Bush’s willingness to allow Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to run amok with rivalry and insubordination undermined his administration.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is competent. He embraced the State Department portfolio to reinfuse principle into American diplomacy after four years of Antony Blinken’s moral equivalence, humiliation, and naivete comparable only to Frank Kellogg who, a decade before World War II began, believed outlawing war could deter dictators and fascists.
Trump, however, delights in humiliating his staff. Belittling them, embarrassing them, and forcing loyalty tests all affirm his power. By forcing Rubio to betray everything for which he stands and by betraying Ukraine in Riyadh, Trump does three interrelated things: He exposes Rubio as a man without principle, power, and influence. Rubio understands Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not start the war but now must do the equivalent of proposing night to be day while he stands in front of a globe insisting the Earth is flat.
The problem is not just that Rubio attaches his name to the greatest betrayal of the 21st century — it is that by doing so, he undermines any authority he might have as the nation’s chief diplomat. He places his sincerity and the fact-based truthfulness at the center of good diplomacy in question. He can show the flag and sit on the State Department’s seventh floor, but he no longer has meaningful authority.
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There is a parallel today between Rubio and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power. She based her career on calling out the U.S. failure to respond to genocide, yet ambition blinded her. She gave former President Barack Obama moral cover as he stood down in the face of the Yazidi genocide. More recently, she did likewise in the Biden administration as Azerbaijan ethnically cleansed Nagorno-Karabakh, famously spending more money on a photographer to document her trip to the region than to help Nagorno-Karabakh when it mattered. Had Power resigned against the backdrop of either, she would have positioned herself well for her true ambition: to be secretary of state.
Rubio wants to be president — he has already run once, and he will likely run again in 2028. He now has a choice: He can demonstrate spine and principle, or he can show a refusal to stand up for any values. Alas, it now appears he has made his decision: He has become the latest man to argue elephants can fly, but only very slowly.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.