Secretary of State Marco Rubio took a break from his diplomatic schedule Friday to deliver the Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, where he put to rest rumors that he is imminently resigning to run for president and instead took up the mantle of coalition bridge builder.
His speech comes as Republicans are still licking their wounds following Tuesday’s wipeout losses in the 2026 midterm elections. Some in the GOP have also suggested that last Tuesday’s results are an indication Rubio should be the nominee in 2028. Multiple outlets reported last week that he is contemplating resigning his post to campaign in full, but Rubio’s remarks themselves gave no explicit indication he is plotting that course.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers the annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/marco_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?w=1024" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/marco_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?w=1024" alt="Rubio" class="wp-image-4803591" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/marco_rubio_fedsoc.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/marco_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/marco_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?resize=768,512 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers the annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
Instead, his speech was aimed at bridging the divide between old-school, Reaganite conservatism and President Donald Trump’s populist MAGA coalition — giving the GOP reason to maintain trust in the president’s particular brand as a viable path for 2028 and beyond.
“Are there any lawyers here? Good,” he joked to the crowd, drawing guffaws, after being introduced by his daughter Daniella, a law student at the University of Virginia. “Because on election night there was a congressman that said we all needed to lawyer up, so here we are.”
Daniella Rubio introduces her father, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, before he delivers the annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/danielle_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?w=1024" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/danielle_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?w=1024" alt="Rubio's daughter" class="wp-image-4803599" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/danielle_rubio_fedsoc.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...6/11/danielle_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...6/11/danielle_rubio_fedsoc.jpg?resize=768,512 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
Daniella Rubio introduces her father, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, before he delivers the annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
Rubio immediately launched into a comparison between Trump’s current approvals with those of former President Ronald Reagan shortly into his first term.
“By March of 1982, President Reagan was 4 points less popular than Jimmy Carter at the same point in his term. The economy had taken a nosedive. In fact, it faced a full-fledged recession,” he said, noting that many were blaming Reagan directly. “Even his foreign policy ambitions were beginning to lose ground. With rising fears of nuclear war, with Russia spilling out into a popular revolt against his efforts to take on Soviet communism around the world. On all fronts, the Reagan administration and the conservative movement at that time was on the defensive.”
Rubio continued to argue that “politics requires more than simply winning elections,” and that “the Left” has bested the conservative movement over the past six decades in pursuing “power” in nongovernment organizations, corporate boardrooms, think tanks, the media, and academia.
Shortly after, Rubio pivoted to claim that, like the Federalist Society itself, the Trump administration was pushing back on efforts from the Left to pursue power, both soft and hard, on the global stage, specifically at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
“None of this has anything to do with any real higher standard of justice. It is a function of the people who control the official organs of global governance,” he claimed. “For this global elite, international law is not a neutral body of rules. International law is an instrument, an instrument to advance their interest under the pretense of universal principles.”
The secretary suggested that both global actors, and left-wing domestic interests, were specifically working “to undermine our power as a sovereign nation” and “hinder the American government’s ability to defend American interests at home and abroad.”
“It is alien to who we are. It is an attack on our essential character as a people, a rejection of the qualities and the instincts that have defined Americans since before the founding itself,” he declared. “As recently as 2021, we had a president telling us that hatred — hatred — was systemically embedded in our laws and our culture.”
The 2026 midterm results saw Democrats pick up more than 40 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. On Friday night, Rubio compared conservatives across the country, disheartened by the midterm elections, with former President George Washington and the Revolutionary Army in December of 1776, when victory over the British seemed out of reach.
“Five years later, Washington, and we acknowledge his French allies, surrounded the British army at Yorktown. Cornwallis surrendered. The revolution prevailed, and a nation was born,” he told the breathless audience. “Great things that last are built in decades, not election cycles.”
“And though we are prepared for the twists and turns and the ups and downs of the road ahead, of this I believe with all my heart that we in this generation will leave for our children and our grandchildren what Americans always leave for their children and their grandchildren, the single greatest nation in the history of the world,” Rubio concluded to thunderous applause.
Ahead of the speech, a person familiar with Rubio’s prepared remarks said the secretary would specifically seek to “call out” foreign actors looking to promote communism abroad and attempts to “step on American sovereignty,” mainstays of Rubio’s public remarks over the past two years.
True to form, Rubio’s straightforward remarks not only reaffirmed his support for Trump’s agenda, stepping into a role frequently occupied by former Vice President Mike Pence during Trump’s first term. One former Trump White House official stated that Pence could walk the “Trump tightrope” and package the president’s populist ideas for a stricter, conservative audience.
Before Pence soured on the president, he was frequently dispatched to “translate” the president’s populist agenda to a more “old-school,” conservative audience, according to a former White House advisor to Pence.
“You see that same trait in Rubio, right?” that person assessed. “He’s very skilled and very adept, and so you put him into situations where you need someone who is a statesman, and he delivers.”
The former aide added that Rubio specifically, like Pence, can “communicate Trump’s vision to a more hawkish, neocon audience very effectively. He can say look at what you want — Trump is delivering on it. Even if you don’t always like the terminology or think he’s doing it the way you would like him to, the win is there, and you should recognize that.”
Rubio’s headliner of annual Friday-evening lecture drew eyeballs
The annual lecture has drawn speakers from across the conservative legal and political worlds. Past lecturers include tech investor Peter Thiel, former Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, and ex-Attorney General Bill Barr. Chief Justice John Roberts and the late Justice Antonin Scalia also delivered the lecture, as did Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2013, when he was still a federal appeals court judge.
Playing into the interests of lawyers in the audience, Rubio used his speech to draw a parallel to judges in the United States whom he accused of seeking to “govern by injunction.” He argued that both the international court and the domestic judges he criticized were using the law to constrain the country’s ability to act.
Asked by the Washington Examiner about some of the motivation and inspiration for featuring the potential presidential candidate, Federalist Society President Sheldon Gilbert declined to comment, saying his network “doesn’t do that.” The organization frequently reminds the public that it takes no political positions.
Rubio embraces a society now shunned by his own boss
The secretary’s appearance on Friday was particularly noteworthy, as the Federalist Society has developed an open feud with Trump, dating back to the final days of the first Trump administration.
In this Nov. 16, 2016, photo, Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower in New York. Leo is advising President Donald Trump on his Supreme Court nominee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...183741004945-scaled-e1778867102368.jpg?w=1024" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...183741004945-scaled-e1778867102368.jpg?w=1024" alt="FILE - In this Nov. 16, 2016 file photo, Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower in New York. Leo is advising President Donald Trump on his Supreme Court nominee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)" class="wp-image-2963362" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...04/AP18183741004945-scaled-e1778867102368.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...4945-scaled-e1778867102368.jpg?resize=300,202 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...4945-scaled-e1778867102368.jpg?resize=768,518 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
In this Nov. 16, 2016, photo, Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo speaks to media at Trump Tower in New York. Leo is advising President Donald Trump on his Supreme Court nominee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Trump has publicly bristled at Leonard Leo, the longtime Federalist Society leader who helped shape the president’s first-term judicial picks, including all three of his Supreme Court nominees.
In one recent instance after a federal trade court blocked his sweeping tariffs in May 2025, Trump called Leo a “sleazebag” and accused the Federalist Society of giving him “bad advice” on judicial nominations. Leo said neither he nor the society had a role in the trade court appointments and credited Trump with transforming the federal judiciary.
A New York University alumnus who attended the convention told the Washington Examiner that the Federalist Society “is not MAGA.”
“Some people are, but most are looking for other conservative ideas, and that’s why a person like Rubio stands out” as a featured speaker, she said.
She recalled that law professor Richard Epstein drew substantial applause on Thursday when he said it was a “damn shame” Trump was in the White House.
“The sentiment is that people are ready for a change,” she said.
Montana Solicitor General Christian Corrigan said before the lecture that he had followed Rubio since his Senate days and welcomed the perspective he brought as secretary of state.
“I think he’s in a perfect role right now to be our ambassador of our ideas and what we believe to the rest of the world,” Corrigan told the Washington Examiner, adding that he was moved by Rubio’s speech in Athens, Greece, last month.
WATCH LIVE: MARCO RUBIO DELIVERS REMARKS AT FEDERALIST SOCIETY
Unlike many other members of Trump’s Cabinet, Rubio stayed away from the 2026 campaign trail, a decision that State Department officials attributed to the stringent ethics rules restricting secretaries of state from explicitly politicking, even in their personal capacity.
Rubio has long been viewed as a top 2028 contender, though he has publicly stated that he would not oppose Vice President JD Vance should he choose to run to succeed Trump.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
