Trump expected to pick Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, reports say
Donald Trump is expected to tap US Senator Marco Rubio to be his Secretary of State, according to reports, as the president-elect reveals more names for his top team.
The development, first reported by the New York Times and then the Reuters news agency, would put the Florida-born politician on track to be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat. However the nomination has not yet been finalised, CBS reports.
Rubio has previously advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba.
It comes as Trump named several other positions for his administration once he takes office in January, including Tom Homan, his former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, who will become the “border tsar”.
Homan has received strong criticism from Democrats for his defending Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy on border crossings during his first administration, which led to the separation of thousands of parents and children seeking asylum at the border.
Former New York congressman Lee Zeldin will lead the Environmental Protection Agency and will “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses,” Trump said in a statement.
In an interview Monday on Fox News Channel, Zeldin, 44, said that he will seek to ensure that the United States is able to “pursue energy dominance … bring back American jobs to the auto industry and so much more.”
According to reports, Trump has also asked Florida’s Mike Waltz, a retired Army National Guard officer and war veteran, to be his national security adviser.
Waltz, who has served multiple tours in Afghanistan and also worked in the Pentagon as a policy adviser when Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates were defence chiefs, is considered hawkish on China.
In a book published earlier this year titled “Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret,” Waltz laid out a five part strategy to preventing war with China, including arming Taiwan faster, re-assuring allies in the Pacific, and modernising planes and ships.
He backed efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and also called for a US boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to its involvement in the origin of Covid-19 and its ongoing mistreatment of the minority Muslim Uighur population.
However there are said to be concerns on Capitol Hill about Trump tapping members of the House, where the final tally is still uncertain and there are worries about pulling any Republican members as it would force a new election to fill the empty seat.
Trump has also selected longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner, to be the deputy chief of policy in his new administration and named New York representative Elise Stefanik as his choice for US Ambassador to the United Nations.
Miller is one of Trump’s longest-serving aides and has been a central figure in many of his policy decisions, particularly on immigration.
He has also helped craft many of Trump’s hardline speeches, and was often the public face of those policies during Trump’s first term in office and during his campaigns.
Miller drew large cheers at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden during the race’s final stretch, telling the crowd that, “your salvation is at hand,” after what he cast as “decades of abuse that has been heaped upon the good people of this nation — their jobs looted and stolen from them and shipped to Mexico, Asia and foreign countries. The lives of their loved ones ripped away from them by illegal aliens, criminal gangs and thugs who don’t belong in this country.”
With agencies
