At a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Secretary Marco Rubio spoke about his actions since being confirmed to run the State Department.
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00:01Well, it's not easy to go last after all these reports that have come here.
00:05First of all, Mr. Mayor, some better be good and I'll be short as well.
00:09A couple things, Mr. President, I think you deserve a lot of credit for two things.
00:13The first is assembling this great team of people, some of whom I've owned for a long
00:17time, others who I've gotten to know during this period of time, but putting together
00:20a team, not just of talented individuals, but that work well together, is something
00:23never going to be reported on in the media or fully seen, but it happens every single
00:27day.
00:27For the most part, I interact with almost everyone around this table at some level
00:31and because of Secretary Kennedy, I'm afraid to eat anything.
00:37He said tootsie rolls are okay in moderation.
00:44But it's a great team.
00:46And here's the second, and I tell this to people all the time, this is an incredibly rewarding
00:49service and you hear it in everyone's voices.
00:52Traditionally in the past, and it's one of the problems we've got in as a country, is
00:55presidents would say, okay, let's go do something, and then they would have to do a study, and
00:59then a study on the study, and then a long internal deliberative process, and by the time
01:03you got to it, it was too late or somebody had forgotten it.
01:06In this administration, it's moving.
01:08You know the direction because you know why you were elected.
01:10The American people elected you very clearly.
01:12And basically, it's measured, I used to say by days and weeks, now it's measured by hours
01:17and minutes.
01:18But action is happening.
01:19And that's what people want to see.
01:20And I'm going to talk about foreign policy in particular because I'm not sure this is
01:23fully appreciated.
01:24We have, this president inherited 30 years of foreign policy that was built around what
01:29was good for the world.
01:30In essence, the decisions we made as a government in trade and foreign policy was basically, is
01:35it good for the world?
01:36Is it good for the global community?
01:37And under President Trump, we're making a foreign policy now that's, was it good for
01:42America?
01:43I was appointed by you and confirmed by the Senate to be the head of the United States Department
01:50of State.
01:51Not the world Department of State, not the global Department of State, the United States
01:55Department of State.
01:56And what that means is our foreign policy is guided by three things.
01:59Does it make America stronger?
02:01Does it make America safer?
02:03And does it make America richer?
02:04If something doesn't do one of those three things, and hopefully all three of those
02:07things, we're not doing it.
02:09Now, we went out and hired a consulting firm to help us organize ourselves.
02:13Luckily, they were free.
02:14They're called the Department of Government Efficiency.
02:17And they helped us do a couple things.
02:19Number one is our foreign aid.
02:20We were funding some crazy stuff.
02:22Crazy stuff.
02:22Crazy stuff.
02:23You tell me, how does a puppet show in some country around the world make us stronger,
02:28safer, and more prosperous?
02:29Okay.
02:30So we got rid of puppet shows and a bunch of other things.
02:32I'm sure there are very good puppet shows.
02:34And I'm sure that a bunch of charities in the world can go pay for it, but the American
02:37taxpayers should not.
02:39We've also, by the way, Mr. President, under your direction, reorganized the Department
02:42of State.
02:43We had offices within offices within offices that didn't even know they existed themselves,
02:47not to mention the rest of them.
02:49And so we've begun to reorganize that as a way to be able to empower our embassies and
02:54our ambassadors and our regional bureaus to do what many of them signed up to do.
02:58And we have a great team of ambassadors you've appointed.
03:00They're coming online every single day.
03:02Very talented people.
03:03Very talented people that are involved.
03:05Something else we got out of the business of, it wasn't widely reported, or maybe it
03:08was.
03:09We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans.
03:15And by the way, I'm not going to say who it is.
03:17I'll leave it up to them.
03:18There's at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social
03:23media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation.
03:26We have these dossiers.
03:28We are going to be turning those over to these individuals.
03:30What was it, me or Elon?
03:34We can follow up with the media.
03:36Well, we are going to turn over these dossiers to the individuals, and they'll decide whether
03:40they want to disclose it or not.
03:42But just think about the Department of State of the United States had set up an office to
03:46monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens to identify them as vectors
03:51of disinformation when we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of
03:56speech and transparency.
03:58And so that's what we're going to be in the business of doing.
04:00We're not going to have an office that does that.
04:01Beyond that, Mr. President, and this I'll move quickly because this has been a team effort,
04:05we have gone to countries all over the world and said, hey, you want good relations with
04:08the United States?
04:08You need to take back your people that are here illegally.
04:11And we've had historic cooperation.
04:13Beyond that, and I say this unapologetically, we are actively searching for other countries to
04:17take people from third countries.
04:19So we are actively, not just El Salvador, we are working with other countries to say,
04:24we want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries.
04:28We do that as a favor to us.
04:29And the further away from America, the better, so they can't come back across the border.
04:33I'm not apologetic about it.
04:34We are doing that.
04:35The president was elected to keep America safe and to get rid of a bunch of perverts and
04:39pedophiles and child rapists out of our country.
04:42Here's something else we've done.
04:43We stopped giving student visas to people who are coming here to burn down our universities and
04:48take over libraries and harass people.
04:50Why are we giving student visas to people who are coming here to create disruption?
04:54And we've taken away the student visas of people that have come here to do that.
04:58It's simple.
04:59If you're coming to America to start riots, we're not going to give you, we're going to
05:03take away your student visa.
05:04And by the way, every country in the world that I travel, 14 countries in 14 weeks, you
05:08know what they all say to me?
05:09Yes, that's what we would do too.
05:10So the only people who seem to disagree with us are a handful of federal judges and a bunch
05:15of crazy people who get paid to write and report.
05:18So anyway, we're getting rid of that.
05:21The last, but now here's some good news.
05:23You know, we're going to have the World Cup, the FIFA World Cup, the FIFA Club Cup, and
05:30then we're going to have the Olympics.
05:31So we have to have a consular affairs bureau.
05:34We have very good, talented people there, but we are going to infuse technology, again,
05:38working with our consultants to be able to, millions of people are coming into this country
05:42for this.
05:43But I also, we've done it to improve customer service.
05:46For some of us who served in Congress recognize that about a year and a half ago, we had a meltdown
05:50under Biden, you couldn't get a passport.
05:52You know, you have people calling, I have a cruise on Friday, my passport expires.
05:55In the month of March, we processed 2.78 million Americans, their passports.
06:01That is the historic, never in any, it's the largest single month processing of passports
06:06ever.
06:07And we think it's a good way to build the momentum to be able to do the visas.
06:11Two last points I want to make.
06:12We have a great team that you've built.
06:14I want to especially acknowledge Steve Woodcoff.
06:17This is a person that doesn't have to be doing what he's doing.
06:19He has a very good life in Miami, my hometown as well.
06:22He has worked incredibly hard, has done it without any agenda.
06:27And I do, we need to acknowledge him.
06:28I want to acknowledge Mr. Boulos as well, who did something really great last week.
06:32They told us this war between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda is an intractable.
06:38It can never happen.
06:39It will never happen.
06:40I sent Mr. Boulos, your envoy.
06:42A week later, I look on my schedule.
06:44The signing of a declaration of peace between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda,
06:49we signed it at the State Department last week.
06:51We hope it will lead now to a lasting, permanent peace that we hope to invite them back to Washington
06:56to sign.
06:57So two great, and we have a lot of good people working on our teams as well, but these are
07:00two great people.
07:01Mike Waltz alluded to this earlier, and this is the last point.
07:04In the first hundred days of the 47th presidency, 47 wrongfully detained Americans have been
07:11returned to the United States, thanks to your leadership and the diplomacy that was exercised
07:16to make that happen.
07:1747 for the 47th president in the first hundred days.
07:20And that's all credit to you, Mr. President.
07:22Thank you for the honor to be able to serve alongside you, for you, and alongside all these
07:27excellent people.
07:28Thank you very much, Marco.
07:30Really great job.