Marco Rubio’s Senate testimony this week showcased a disciplined, media‑savvy operator — but does that make him a viable 2028 presidential contender? The short answer: maybe, if Republicans prioritize steadiness and foreign‑policy credibility; unlikely, if the party seeks a fresh face untainted by the Trump administration’s controversies.
"There is no war against Venezuela, and we did not occupy a country. There are no U.S. troops on the ground," Rubio said, portraying the mission as a narrowly focused law‑enforcement operation, not a military intervention.
Ranking Member Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D‑N.H.) sharply questioned whether ousting Nicolas Maduro justified the political and financial costs, citing estimates that the raid and U.S. naval blockade could total as much as $1 billion. Shaheen and other Democrats also raised alarms about Venezuela’s interim leader, former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez; as Shaheen noted, “the Drug Enforcement Administration has reportedly identified Delcy Rodríguez as a significant actor in the drug trade.”
Rubio responded that Rodríguez remains unindicted compared with Maduro and insisted the administration’s short‑term goal is stability, even at the cost of dealing with leaders the U.S. finds untrustworthy. "We are dealing with individuals that in our system would not be acceptable in the long term," Rubio acknowledged. "But we are in a transition to stabilization phase. You have to work with the people currently in charge of the elements of government."
Rubio’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee offered a compact primer on his political instincts: calibrate messaging to reassure skeptical Republicans, defend administration actions as lawful and limited, and pivot to competence. In testimony about U.S. policy toward Venezuela, Rubio repeatedly sought to tamp down fears of broader military entanglement. That posture — insistence on control, reassurance to wary colleagues, and a steady stream of talking points — is precisely the leadership style he would bring to a presidential campaign.
That style has upside. For Republican primary voters who prize experience and foreign‑policy gravitas, Rubio’s record and his command of the hearing room are assets. He can credibly argue he knows how to manage crises, brief allies, and sell difficult decisions to a fractious Congress. Rubio’s ability to convert a contentious episode into a disciplined narrative is a skill many candidates lack.
But there are clear liabilities. Rubio is now visibly associated with an administration whose actions in Venezuela and elsewhere have provoked bipartisan concern. His defense of those actions — even when carefully worded — ties him to controversies that could be weaponized in both the primary and the general election. Moreover, the GOP electorate remains divided between establishment figures and insurgent outsiders; Rubio’s resume may read as establishment to voters craving disruption.
Strategically, Rubio’s path depends on the Republican mood in 2027–28. If the party prioritizes stability, foreign‑policy competence, and a candidate who can reassure international partners, Rubio could be a consensus choice. If the party continues to reward insurgent energy and anti‑establishment branding, Rubio’s association with the administration and his measured demeanor could be liabilities.
If Rubio does decide to run for the White House, it wouldn’t be his first bid: he launched a high‑profile 2016 campaign, gained early momentum, but suspended it after losing the GOP primary to Donald Trump—an outcome that underscored both his appeal to establishment conservatives and the limits of that appeal in an insurgent primary environment.
A familiar figure on the national stage, the Cuban‑American politician rose through the Florida Legislature (serving in the state House from 2000 to 2008 and advancing into leadership roles) before winning a U.S. Senate seat in 2010 and building a reputation as a fluent communicator on domestic and foreign policy issues.
Rubio is a manager of narratives: he defends policy by narrowing the frame, emphasizing limits, and offering procedural assurances. That temperament, showcased in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, can be a virtue in a president — or it can read as defensive and overly cautious when voters want boldness.
Should Rubio run in 2028? Yes, if the GOP wants a steady hand and foreign‑policy credibility; no, if the party prizes novelty and distance from the Trump administration’s flashpoints. His Senate testimony this week made both the promise and the peril of his candidacy plain.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.