Not since Henry Kissinger has one man held both jobs. President Donald Trump has named Marco Rubio his national security adviser while leaving him in place as Secretary of State, the first time anyone has combined the two posts since the Kissinger years of the 1970s. The announcement came on Thursday, September 17.
The opening came when Mike Waltz left the adviser’s chair. Waltz is now nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. His exit was messy: a Signal chat mishap had put sensitive military information in front of a journalist.
Rubio is a former Florida senator and was once a Trump rival. Since his confirmation at State he has become a central figure in the administration’s foreign policy overhaul. He has reorganized the department, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and overseen a wave of visa revocations. WBAL-TV reported that he has lined up behind Trump’s “America First” approach, with a stated aim of making the country safer and stronger.
The double appointment has already drawn the Kissinger comparison, and it has raised a practical question: can one person do both jobs well? John Bolton, himself a former national security adviser, told NPR the two roles are fundamentally different and hard to manage at once.
The workload is plain enough. Rubio must now coordinate the executive branch’s foreign policy machinery while still running the State Department, PBS noted, at a time when diplomatic missions abroad and national security threats are already pressing.
