Last Friday (18), the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, gained prominence in the Brazilian news by announcing that he revoked the visas of Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of “allies” in the Supreme Court (STF) and his family, who are thus prevented from entering the United States.
In a publication at X, Rubio mentioned that the measure was motivated by what he called “Witch Hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro, defendant in the STF in a lawsuit for alleged coup attempt on Friday of a Federal Police Operation (PF), authorized by Moraes.
A member of the Republican Party, Marco Antonio Rubio is 54, was born in Miami and is the son of Cubans who emigrated to the United States in 1956, three years before the seizure of power by Fidel Castro on Caribbean Island.
Rubio was a deputy in the Chamber of Florida and in 2010 was elected for the first time for the American Senate. In the legislature, it was notable for the combative posture against left -wing governments and dictatorships in Latin America.
He opposed attempts to normalize Cuba’s relations during the Obama era, is a great critic of Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro, and called for sanctions against former Argentine President Cristina Kirchner for corruption.
About Brazil, he condemned Moraes for the Blocking of X in the country in 2024 and said that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is a “extreme left leader who covers the criminal nature of the Narcoregime of Maduro”.
Rubio is also critical of the dictatorships of Iran and China: in 2020, he was the target of Beijing’s sanctions due to his statements on the repression of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
He had a conflicting relationship in the past with his now boss. In 2016, when Donald Trump won him in the Primary of the Republican Party for the presidential election, the discussions between the two in the debates made the party of social networking users.
In one of these debates, Trump ridiculed Rubio for sweating too much. “It’s disgusting. We need [na Casa Branca] Of someone who doesn’t have whatever he has, ”he said.
The then Senator of Florida also ridiculed the future US president by highlighting, for example, Trump’s spelling errors in his posts on then Twitter (today X).
“It must be how it is written at Wharton School of Business,” Rubio said, quoting the university where Trump studied. He also stated that Trump “must have hired a foreign worker to make his tweets.”
Finally, Rubio gave up the 2016 pre-campaign after being defeated in the primaries in his own state.
Then, during the first term of Trump (2017-2021), Rubio was co-author of a law to make the United States removal of NATO more difficult (a threat of Trump), demanding that two thirds of the Senate ratify the measure.
Despite these disagreements, Trump nominated him to the State Department in November, a few days after the presidential election won by the New York business, and in January, all 99 present senators voted to confirm Rubio’s nomination for the folder.
Since arriving at the State Department, the former senator has been noted for buying Trump’s great fights in foreign policy. In March, before Kirchner had his conviction confirmed by the Argentine Supreme Court and began to serve house arrest, Rubio prevented his entry into the United States.
He also coordinated actions against South Africa, so Trump called “white genocide” in the African country; the revocation of visas of anti-Israel activists, which the secretary called “Hamas supporters”; and the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
As for peace negotiations, Rubio organized conversations with Russia and Ukraine about the end of the war between the two countries (although it has irritated Kiev by saying that Ukraine will have to accept that it will not recover all the territories of the country that Russia has occupied), still unsuccessfully, and the truce between Israel and Iran, which waged a 12 -day conflict in June, among other negotiations.
