Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended President Donald Trump’s decision to initiate the conflict in Iran at an event on Friday night.
While speaking at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Rubio offered his post-midterm-election assessment of the conflict a few days after Vice President JD Vance issued a lengthy statement following the Republican Party’s significant losses. Vance directly addressed the monthslong conflict and “the cost of living/inflation,” saying Democrats’ election success was largely tied to the situation in Iran and that voters frustrated by the result should focus on “electing Republicans who share your worldview.” Trump backed Vance’s statement by saying it was “largely true.”
Rubio perspective was markedly more complimentary of Trump’s February decision and the president himself, as the secretary said he “sees firsthand every single day” that Trump’s first priority is serving the people.
Secretary of State @marcorubio speaks at CPAC Mar-a-Lagopic.twitter.com/PTGMJcZyMv
— CPAC (@CPAC) November 7, 2026
“The most important thing the president can do for our country is to keep it safe,” he said. “And there are people around the world that want to destroy it. They want to destroy our country; they want to destroy our way of life. He was elected to do the hard things… it would have been very easy to do what multiple presidents before him have done, which is ignore the Iran thing, leave it for the next guy, put it aside, and don’t worry about it. That would have been the easiest thing to do.”
“But this president didn’t do that… we cannot live in a world in which the most radical, terroristic regime on the planet possesses a weapon of mass destruction,” Rubio continued. “And we had president after president ignore it and allow it to linger, but this president wasn’t elected to ignore it, and he wasn’t elected to allow threats to linger.” Though the public largely doesn’t approve of the conflict, according to public polling, the White House has defended it by saying it was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and that further degrading its military will disrupt the terrorist-sponsoring nation’s regional activities and ability to threaten the United States.
BYRON YORK: IN THE GOP, A NEW 2028 RACE
Trump’s approval rating has steadily declined since he took office in January 2025, while that of the broader Democratic Party has remained roughly the same during the same period. Democrats nonetheless dealt Republicans a striking defeat this week, as they won essentially every race deemed critical in the lead-up to the elections and significantly overperformed in traditionally red states such as Texas.
Debates about the 2028 presidential election have come into focus since. Both Vance and Rubio have long been floated as potential candidates, and by extension, heirs to Trump and the current administration. Neither candidate has yet declared they will run.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
