WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has a message for the establishment foreign policy crowd: you were wrong, and America is stronger for ignoring you.
In a long-form interview filmed Thursday morning at the State Department, Rubio told Breitbart News exclusively that the America First doctrine driving President Donald Trump's second term is nothing more exotic than common sense — putting what's right for America before anything else.
The exchange came in response to a question from Breitbart News, as Rubio discussed Trump's address to the United Nations General Assembly. That speech, Rubio noted, centered on the use of American power to advance American interests.
Critics of that approach, Rubio argued, have it exactly backwards. Far from isolating the United States, an America First posture — in his telling — also lifts up America's friends and allies around the world.
And then came the line that will echo through the foreign policy establishment: the elites who find America First distasteful, if they had gotten their way, would have reduced the United States to a "middle power" instead of a world superpower.
"But if we had listened to them, I mean, at this point, America would be a middle power," Rubio said.
It's a blunt framing of a debate that has been building since Trump first descended the escalator in 2015. The Washington foreign policy consensus — the same crowd that cheered endless wars, open-ended nation-building, and blank-check commitments abroad — has spent years insisting that "America First" means America alone.
Rubio's response, delivered from the seventh floor of Foggy Bottom, is that the critics are confusing American strength with American servitude. Power exercised in the national interest, he contends, is not a withdrawal from the world — it's the only way the United States can lead in it.
The secretary's comments dovetail with the sanctions actions his department announced the same day. Rubio accused Communist Cuba of operating as an "outpost for malign actors and terror groups — including the Islamic Republic of Iran," as The National reported, announcing sanctions against Banco Internacional de Comercio, a Cuban state-owned bank said to have provided financial services to Iran's Karafarin Bank since at least 2022.
"For too long, Communist Cuba has been allowed to operate as an outpost for malign actors and terror groups – including the Islamic Republic of Iran," Rubio said in a statement announcing the designation, which moved alongside Treasury Department measures against Iranian financial networks.
That's America First translated into policy: not lectures at the UN, not another summit, but pressure on the financial arteries of adversaries — and a clear signal that Washington will keep dismantling the links between Havana, Tehran, and anyone else threatening U.S. interests.
Rubio's tenure has drawn fire from predictable corners. One recent profile in mainstream media attempted to paint him as a man who abandoned his principles for power — a familiar smear deployed against any conservative who actually governs rather than preens for The Atlantic.
Meanwhile, Rubio's State Department has continued its internal housekeeping. He issued a department-wide ethics reminder urging employees to avoid conflicts of interest and comply with federal ethics law, stressing that staff should "avoid using our public offices for private gain," according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The message followed Trump's removal of Kimberly Guilfoyle as U.S. ambassador to Greece over allegations she accepted gifts and benefits in exchange for access to officials.
The timing drew notice, though the memo did not mention Guilfoyle by name and the department did not explain why it was sent. Guilfoyle has denied the allegations.
For everyday Americans, the practical stakes are straightforward. When foreign policy is anchored to the national interest rather than to the approval of global institutions, resources stay here at home, adversaries face consequences, and American leverage is deployed on America's terms — not as a bargaining chip for international consensus.
Rubio's framing also lands as a direct rebuke to the worldview that governed Washington for a generation. The think-tank class, the editorial boards, the retired generals on cable — they warned that Trump's approach would shatter the alliance system. Instead, Rubio's argument is that the alliance system is stronger when America is strong enough to lead it, rather than careful enough to offend no one.
The interview is scheduled to air in full in the days ahead, and it will serve as something of a mission statement for the administration's second-term foreign policy. Rubio's message, delivered without apology, is that the era of apologizing for American power is over.
Our Take
Rubio's "middle power" line isn't a rhetorical flourish — it's a history lesson the establishment refuses to learn.
For three decades, the Washington foreign policy consensus operated on a simple principle: American strength was something to be apologized for, restrained, and ultimately handed over to international bodies that answered to no voter and no taxpayer. The Iraq War, endless Afghanistan nation-building, the Paris Accord, the Iran nuclear deal — every one of them sold to the American people as "leadership," and every one of them delivered on any terms but ours.
That crowd is furious that Rubio no longer recites their catechism. The profile calling him a man who traded his principles for power is a tell: the people who wrote it can't imagine that a Cuban-American son of exiles might genuinely believe that an America that shrinks is an America that invites aggression.
Look at what Rubio actually did Thursday — not what the editorial pages say about him. He sanctioned a Cuban bank funneling money to Iran's banking system. The Iran deal architecture that the establishment spent years defending? The Trump-Rubio State Department is dismantling it one bank at a time, not one photo-op at a time.
And that ethics memo? The media treated the timing as the story. The actual story is that the State Department has no interest in the kind of access-peddling that built the modern diplomatic-industrial complex. Careers for cash. Ambassadorships as party favors. That's the swamp, and it's getting drained from the seventh floor down.
Rubio's line about the UNGA speech matters for one reason above all: Trump stood before the world's biggest talk shop and told it the truth — that American power exists to serve Americans first. The same elites who lecture us about "isolationism" spent decades sending our sons and daughters to fight wars that had no measurable endpoint and no definable victory.
America First isn't isolationism. It's refusing to let the American people be the ones who pay for everyone else's interests. It's the doctrine that American strength is not a global entitlement to be spent by international committees — it's the inheritance of a nation that finally elected leaders who won't trade it away.
Rubio called it common sense. That's damning enough for the people who spent thirty years pretending it wasn't. Now the question for every Republican who spent the Bush era nodding along to that crowd: whose side are you on?
