Why Trump says he 'almost terminated' Marco Rubio after secretary’s rousing Munich speech
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump told his self-assembled “Board of Peace” during its first meeting that he almost fired his own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, for delivering a foreign policy speech that was better received than Trump’s own rhetoric.
“In fact, so proud that I almost terminated his [employment], because they were saying, ‘Why can’t Trump do this?’ I do, but I say it differently,” Trump remarked as a seeming joke. He was referring to Rubio’s recent address at the Munich Security Conference.
The president added, “But Marco, don’t do any better than you did, please. Because if you do, you’re out of here.”
During his speech to the Munich Security Conference, Rubio seemed to walk back Trump’s “quiet quitting” of NATO and threatened unprovoked attack against Greenland.
“Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past,” Rubio remarked. “And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.
“For the United States and Europe, we belong together.”
Rubio’s address was met with a far better reception than the speeches delivered by either Trump or Vice President JD Vance to European statespeople. At the same time, it had its critics from those who felt it did not undo the damage caused by Trump’s previous foreign policy actions.
"Fresh from toppling the president of Venezuela and taking control of the world's largest oil reserves," progressive journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in The Guardian, "the Trump Administration's top diplomat arrived at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, (February 14) with a rather new and very disturbing message for European governments: Empire is great. Empire is back. Empire is American. The U.S. secretary of state delivered what can only be described as a 22-minute ode to empire. A love letter to conquest and colonialism. A proud defense of the West's territorial expansion."
Conservative pundit William Kristol expressed similar views on his website, The Bulwark, in which he argued the Trump administration violates the spirit of the American revolutionaries.
“The administration in which Rubio serves pretends to celebrate that revolution, but hates the abstract truth which animated that revolution and which elevates it above merely another mundane struggle for power or profit,” Kristol wrote. “The Trump administration hates that fact because it is a reminder that there is more to life than power and profit. And it hates that truth precisely because it remains a stumbling block to tyranny and oppression.”
The Munich Security Conference itself has quoted Rubio’s words ominously, arguing that they speak to a future of foreign policy which would be entirely amoral.
“Transactional deals may well replace principled cooperation, private interests may increasingly trump public ones, and regions may become dominated by great powers rather than governed by international rules and norms,” the authors wrote.