Secretary Marco Rubio Remarks at His Swearing-In

01/21/2025 05:05 PM EST

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

Washington, D.C.

Eisenhower Executive Office Building

….RIP American leadership by example…USA pretending it’s a victim is hilarious…

“Does it make us stronger, does it make us safer, and does it make us more prosperous?  If it doesn’t do one of those three things, we will not do it.”

At least Rubio still mentioned peace.

He had earlier told employees this:

I am new to this department. Today is my first day on the job literally, but I am not a stranger to it. I have interacted with many of you – both in my travels abroad and in our daily functions. My job now is different. And our job in some ways will be different. In our republic, the voters decide the course of our nation, both domestically and abroad, and they have elected Donald J. Trump as our President when it comes to foreign policy on a very clear mission. And that mission is to ensure that our foreign policy is centered on one thing and that is the advancement of our national interest, which they have clearly defined through his campaign as anything that makes us stronger or safer or more prosperous, and that will be our mission. That will be our job across the world, is to ensure that we have a foreign policy that advances the national interest of the United States.

I expect every nation on earth to advance their national interests. And in those instances – and I hope there will be many — in which our national interests and theirs align, we look forward to working with them. This is in many ways – and again, it was referenced by President Trump yesterday in his speech that he designs – that his overriding goal for global policy is the promotion of peace, the avoidance of conflict, and no agency will more – be more critical in that regard than this one. In fact, it’s its founding principle and purpose. And that’s what we endeavor to do – to promote peace around the world, because that’s in our national interest. Without peace, it is hard to be a strong nation, a prosperous nation, and one that is better off.

But there will also be challenges. We recognize that there will be those times unfortunately as humans interact with one another because of our nature that there will be conflict. We will seek to prevent them and avoid them, but never at the expense of our national security, never at the expense of our national interest, and never at the expense of our core values as a nation and as a people. We are – at the end of the day – a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator – not from our laws, not from our governments.

And we hope the entire world can one day live under that, and we will always – always – be strong defenders of that principle – never at the expense of our national interest, never at the expense of pragmatic foreign policy, never at the expense of the reality that oftentimes in foreign policy our choices are not between – are between two – a bad option and a good option. Sometimes in foreign relations our options are two bad ones, and we’re just trying to figure out which one of them is least bad. And that’s unfortunate, but it is true. And that’s a tough job. It’s our job. And we’ll seek to do it right and well. That is the core mission of this agency, and it will be the core mission while Donald Trump is President, and we will be effective on his behalf.

I also want this agency to be – and I don’t mean – not that it’s irrelevant now, but I want it to be where it belongs. I want the Department of State to be at the center of how America engages the world – not just how we execute on it, but on how we formulate it. Some of the brightest minds in foreign policy reside within this building and within this government, and we need to ensure that we have an environment here that’s conducive to creativity, to boldness, to new ideas, to recognizing the dynamic world in which we live – one that is changing faster than it has ever changed before. And we need to be ahead of it.