Rubio: We Are The U.S. State Department, Not The Global State Department

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: It's not easy to go last, so I'd better be good and I'll be short as well.

Mr. President. I think you deserve a lot of credit for two things. The first is assembling a great group of people. Some I’ve gotten to know during this period of time, but putting together not just a team of talented individuals that work well together—it is something we don’t report on in the media or see on TV, but it happens every single day. I interact with almost everyone around the table at some level. And because of certain—because of Secretary Kennedy, I’m afraid to eat anything.

[Laughter]

He said Tootsie Rolls are okay in moderation.

But it is a great team, and I tell this to people all the time. This is incredibly rewarding service, and you hear it in everyone’s voice. Traditionally in the past, this is one of the problems we got into as a country. The president would say let's go do something, and they would have to do a study, and then a study on the study, and then a long internal deliberative process, and by the time you got to it, it was too late or somebody forgot it. In this administration, it is moving. You know the direction, and the people elected you clearly, and basically, it is measured—I used to say by days and weeks, but now hours and minutes. But action is happening. That is what people want to see.

Let me talk about foreign policy in particular, so this can be fully appreciated. This President inherited 30 years of foreign policy built around what was good for the world. The decisions we made as a government in trade and foreign policy were basically, is it good for the world and the global community?

And under President Trump, we are making foreign policy based on is it good for America. I was appointed by you and confirmed by the Senate to be the head of the United States Department of State, not the World Department of State, not the Global Department of State, but the United States Department of State. What that means is foreign policy is about three things: Does it make America stronger? Does it make America safer? Does it make America richer? If something doesn’t do those three things—and hopefully all three things—we are not doing it.

Now, we hired a consulting firm to organize ourselves, and luckily they were free, they're called D.O.G.E. And they helped us do a couple of things.

Foreign aid. We were funding some crazy stuff—crazy stuff! You tell me, how does a puppet show in some country around the world make us stronger, safer, more prosperous? So we got rid of the puppet shows and many other things. I’m sure they were very good puppet shows, and I'm sure some charity can go pay for it, but the American taxpayer should not.

By the way, Mr. President, with your direction, we reorganized the Department of State. We had offices within offices within offices that did not know they existed themselves, not to mention us. We began to reorganize as a way to empower our embassies and our ambassadors, and our regional bureaus to do what many of them signed up to do. We have a great team of ambassadors. They are coming online, very talented people, very talented people involved.

Something else we got out of the business of, and it wasn't widely reported, we had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans. By the way, I will not say who it is, but I will leave it to them. There's at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that moment—social media posts to identify them as purveyors of information. We have these dossiers, and we will turn those over to the individuals.

We will turn over the dossiers to the individuals, and they will decide whether they want to disclose or not.

The Department of State of the U.S. had set up an office to monitor social media posts and commentary of American citizens to identify them as vectors of disinformation. When we know the best way to combat disinformation is through freedom of speech and transparency. That is what we will be in the business of doing. We will not have an office that does that.

Beyond that, Mr. President, it has been a team effort. We have countries all over the world and said, "Do you want a good relationship with the United States? You need to take back your people who are here illegally."

We’ve had historic cooperation. Beyond that, I say this unapologetically—we are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries, not just El Salvador, but other countries, to say, “We want to send you the most despicable human beings to your countries. Will you do that as a favor to us?” The further away from America, the better, so they can’t come back across the border. I am not apologetic for that. The President was elected to keep America safe and get rid of a bunch of perverts and pedophiles and child rapists out of our country.

Here's something else we've done. We have stopped student visas for people who burn down our universities and take over libraries and harass people. Why are we giving student visas to people to create disruption? We have taken away student visas from people who came here to do that.

It is simple—if you are coming to America to start riots, we will not give you, and we will take away, a student visa. By the way, every country I have traveled to, 14 countries in 14 weeks, and you know what they say to me? “Yes, that is what we would do too.” The only people that seem to disagree are a handful of federal judges and a bunch of crazy people who get paid to write a report. Anyway, we are getting rid of that.

The last—turning to some good news, we will have the World Cup, FIFA World Cup, the FIFA Club Cup, and the Olympics. We have to have a very talented consular affairs people, but technology, working with consultants, and millions of people coming into the country for this.

But I also want to improve customer service. Some of us who served in Congress recognized a year and a half ago we had a meltdown under Biden. You couldn’t get a passport. We had people calling in on Friday, “My passport expires,” and in the month of March, 2.78 million Americans got their passports. That’s the largest single-month processing of passports ever, and we think it is a good way to build momentum to do these things.

To last points I want to make, we have a great team we have built. I want to especially recognize Steve Witkoff. This is a person who doesn't have to be doing what he's doing. He has a very good life in Miami, my hometown as well. He has worked incredibly hard. He has done it without an agenda. We need to acknowledge him.

We did something great. This war between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda is intractable could never happen and will never happen. A week later, I look at the schedule, and the signing of a Declaration of peace between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, we signed at the State Department last week. We hope it will lead to lasting peace and invite them back to Washington to sign. We have a lot of great people working on the teams as well, but these are two great people.

And Mike Waltz alluded to this, and this is the last point. In the first 100 days of the 47th President, 47 wrongfully detained Americans were returned to the United States, thanks to your leadership and the diplomacy that was exercised to make that happen. 47 people for the 47th president in the first 100 days. The parties have been present in the first 100 days, and all credit to you, Mr. President. Thank you for the honor to serve alongside you, for you, and alongside all these talented people.