Note from our Editor-in-Chief:
This article is part of our series on the ‘Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse.’ With several weeks left in the 2026 midterm elections, we believe this is the moment to capture the damage the Trump administration has inflicted throughout the U.S. and the world – and profile some of the people most responsible. Read Part 1 here. The only way we can report original, long-form stories like these is with your support. Support independent media in this new age of American authoritarianism. – Mehdi
In the days before the 2020 election, a group of Donald Trump supporters surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas, seemingly trying to force it off the road.
“We love what they did, but here’s the thing they don’t know,” Marco Rubio said shortly after. “We do that in Florida every day.”
It was one of several moments that revealed how the Florida senator was changing.
“That was not who I thought I knew – who I always thought was really respectful of democracy, and worked well with Democrats,” a former Rubio Senate staffer tells Zeteo. “Being flippant about some of these things that either were, or were adjacent to, political violence… this crossed the line, for me anyway.”
Others saw something else.
“That’s typical Marco Rubio, trying to get something positive out of it, because he knows deep down that was wrong,” Mike Fasano, a former Florida state legislator who served alongside Rubio, says with a chuckle. “Marco Rubio has still a great future in his political life – and I can understand why he says some of the things he says, because I’ve seen firsthand how you get elected. You have to appease the primary voter.”
One of the most successful Republicans in the modern era, Rubio has consistently meant different things to different people. He has climbed from a state legislature, to the U.S. Senate, to one of the most powerful offices in the world, leading the State Department in Trump’s second administration.
Rubio rose on the strength of his backstory, the son of Cuban exiles. He was seen as a conservative but reasonable Republican, a supporter of immigration reform, free speech, human rights, and foreign aid as soft power. That’s all changed.
It is a feature of the Trump era that most Republicans have put aside supposed morals and beliefs in order to maintain – or gain – power. Perhaps none have debased themselves as conspicuously, thoroughly, and successfully as Rubio.