Secretary of State Marco Rubio With Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel

QUESTION:  Secretary of State Marco Rubio, here we are on board Air Force One, where we’re headed to China.  These meetings are very critical.  I mean, my first question:  Do you view China as our top geopolitical foe?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, it’s both our top political challenge geopolitically, and it’s also the most important relationship for us to manage.  I mean, it’s a big, powerful country.  It’s going to continue to grow.  But we’re going to have interests of ours that are going to be in conflict with interests of theirs, and to avoid wars and maintain peace and stability in the world we’re going to have to manage those. 

There are clearly areas where they’re so important for the United States that we’re going to have to raise those issues, and we’ll continue to do so.  The President’s going to continue to do so.  There might be some areas of cooperation too, and we want to make sure we don’t walk away from those. 

QUESTION:  It’s interesting.  The one thing the President always says, he’s America First.  He understands President Xi is going to be China first, Putin will be Russia first.  I think having that understanding is a little bit unique historically speaking, as if we should be surprised that they put their country above ours. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Actually, foreign policy and national security matters work best when you understand that point.  Every country should do what’s in the best interests of their country.  And then where there are areas of alignment, where what’s in our best interests and their best interests are aligned, that’s where you have cooperation, that’s where you have alliances, that’s where you have strong bonds of friendship.

When there’s conflict, that’s – between what they want and what we want, that’s where the work of diplomacy and these personal relationships between the leaders is so critical.  And there are times when some of those issues of conflict are irreconcilable.  I think Iran is an example of that:  their clerical regime wants to have a nuclear weapon, and the world – led by President Trump – says that’s completely impossible, cannot happen.  So unfortunately, there are some areas like that where it comes up. 

But there are areas where, if we can find areas of commonality, that’s very powerful and important.  But we will have to manage these bilateral differences because they’re very significant, and when it’s two big, powerful countries, that falling apart could have tremendous significance on the global economy and on global peace. 

QUESTION:  I want to get back to Iran in a second.  Let me stay on China: trade, tariffs, intellectual property theft, Taiwan.  Their help of Iran, I think, is part of it also.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, all those topics will come up.  There’s no doubt about it.  In the case of the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan, and so forth, it’s not in China’s interest or anyone’s interest for there to be any sort of forced change in the status quo.  I think stability there is very important.  We’ve made clear to them that any support for Iran would obviously be detrimental for our relationship.  That obviously is going to come up in this conversation.

On trade, look, the United States is very clear:  We have to be able to make our own stuff.  We cannot depend on China – or any country for that matter – for 100 percent of anything that we need.  When you depend on any other country for 100 percent of what you need, you’re very vulnerable.  Likewise, China wants to – they want – China wants the world to be dependent on them for 100 percent because it gives them strength and leverage.  So that’s a perfect example of an area in which our interests are not aligned.  And – but the President is very committed to bringing back factories, bringing back industrial capacity of the United States, and diversifying where we get our rare earths, our critical minerals, our supply chains. 

QUESTION:  President Trump has described President Xi to me in interviews as stoic, all business, no niceties in that sense, although there will be a state dinner.  Now, I know this is your first trip to China but not your first go-around with China. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.  Well, look, their system is very disciplined, it’s very focused.  When you speak to them, they have an agenda; they go through that agenda.  The President’s style is quite different, but they seem to have a very good at least interpersonal relationship, and that’s important.  Look, the differences between the countries remain, but the ability to manage it becomes not easy, but easier, when the heads of state have a good working relationship – and they seem to. 

QUESTION:  Yeah.  Well, I think so too.  What would you say – what is your read on President Xi?  I mean, you read that their economy is struggling.  You read that he’s isolated.  You read both Putin and President Xi have a pretty high degree of paranoia.  What is your read as you look at President Xi from a distance going into the meeting?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, I think my read has been what I think it has been for a while, and that is China has a plan.  I mean, they clearly view themselves – they believe they will be the world’s most powerful country, they’ll surpass the United States, and they have a plan to do it, and they’re executing on that plan.  And I don’t blame them.  If I were the Chinese Government, I’d have the same plan. 

We, on the other hand, don’t view it that way, and we don’t want to see anything – we’re not trying to constrain China, but their rise cannot come at our expense.  Their rise cannot come at our fall.  So there’s an area where we’re just going to have a difference of opinion. 

But my view of them and of the government in China is they’re very confident, they have a plan, and they’re trying to execute on that plan, which is fine.  I understand that from a nation-state perspective.  But when that plan is in conflict with the national interest of the United States, we need to do what’s right for the United States.  And that’ll come up on this trip, but more importantly, that’ll be a feature of this relationship for a long time. 

QUESTION:  If you had – it’s kind of hard.  It’s not a fair question to ask, but if you had a goal coming out of this summit – because this is a big deal that you’re going and the President is going, the Secretary of Defense is on this plane, and so many others, and every top business leader in America is going on this trip.  It’s kind of crazy.  If you had a goal, what you would like, you would say would be – how would you define a successful trip?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, I think it’s already a success because we’re going, and we’re going to be able to talk to them as opposed to at them.  One thing is to exchange phone calls, and another thing is to put out messages in press releases and statements.  But when the leaders are actually engaging personally – not just the president to president, but me with their foreign minister, and Pete Hegseth with their defense minister, and so forth – it creates channels of communication that can prove valuable in a time of potential conflict or where there might be heightened tension.  So that’s important. 

I also think – and we’re not prepared to announce this yet, but there are a couple of unique areas of cooperation that we can work together on.  The obvious ones are obviously fentanyl precursor production, which China – because their system can do this – can really crack down on that, and that would help lower fentanyl deaths in the United States.  And there are a couple of other areas of international relations where perhaps we intend to talk to them about discreetly – we’re not going to announce it in the media – but areas that we both share some concern over.

QUESTION:  I have a friend of mine, he’s a great inventor, and the level of intellectual property theft not just impacted his entire business, but it’s impacting many American companies.  Big issue? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  That’s right.  An enormous issue and one that we’re going to continue to raise.  Even as we try to protect our companies and our competitive advantage, we’re going to raise that with them.  I don’t think there’s any point in denying that the fact of the matter is that a lot of the advancements – not all, but a lot of the advancements you’ve seen in the commercial sector, in the industrial sector, in the technological sector in China – is a product of intellectual property theft and/or reverse engineering, which is the same thing, of our own technology.  So that has to be addressed. 

But I also think we can’t only rely on that.  We have to stay ahead of the curve on innovation.  One thing is if you’re stealing or taking the stuff that was cutting-edge five years ago, but the things that are going to be cutting-edge five years from now we’ve got to continue to invest and push our companies to continue to stay ahead of that pace of theft and continue to lead the world in innovation.  

QUESTION:  Maybe the best way to transition to the issue of Iran, which I want to ask you about, is that China’s both public statements and their actions – although it was interesting that a Chinese tanker got hit in the Strait of Hormuz, but obviously they’ve been taking a very different position.  We keep reading the intelligence that’s showing that they’re helping the Iranians.  Obviously it’s more important to them for —

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, we’ve made the argument to the Chinese – and I hope it’s compelling, and they’ll have a chance to do something about it at the United Nations later this week when there’s a resolution just condemning Iran on what they’re doing with the straits. 

Look, there’s three things.  The Chinese have ships stuck in the Persian Gulf, because setting up a system that says we’re going to let certain ships through but others not, it’s easier said than done  And you saw a Chinese – not Chinese-flagged vessel but it was Chinese cargo – got hit over the weekend.  I’m sure Iran didn’t do it deliberately, but they did it.  It happened.  And so that’s why these Chinese ships are stuck in there. 

The second is I don’t think that China – it’s a huge source of instability.  It threatens to destabilize Asia more than any other part of the world, because it’s heavily reliant on the straits for energy. 

And the third reason is because China’s economy is export-driven, meaning their economy is fueled not by what they consume domestically but by what they make and sell to other countries.  Well, if all the countries of the world economies are melting down because of this crisis in the straits, they’re going to be buying less Chinese product and the Chinese exports are going to drop precipitously. 

So it’s in their interest to resolve this, and we hope to convince them to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they’re doing now and trying to do now in the Persian Gulf. 

QUESTION:  I thought you had a lot of jobs by being the Secretary of State and the NSA, the head of the NSA.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Then you had to go in and become White House press secretary the other day.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  No, no, we – by the way, she’s – Karoline is irreplaceable.  I was just – I was just a pitch-in, a pinch hitter.  

QUESTION:  It seemed that you like it.  It seemed like you were having fun. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, yeah, I don’t know I’d have fun if I had to do it every week, but one time ain’t too bad.  And I enjoyed it, and it was about foreign policy mostly, so I was honored to be able to do it.  But we can’t wait till Karoline gets back.  She had a beautiful baby and we wish her the best.  But we can’t wait to see her back.  

QUESTION:  Picture was beautiful.  But now that we are on the issue of Iran, let me specifically ask you, because it seems like there are two major issues that just continue to percolate.  And I had a conversation with the President, a private conversation, and I did ask him if I could talk about it.  And it was I asked him maybe a week ago – I said, are you going to go back to bombing?  He said – I said, you could probably wipe out their economy in 15 minutes.  He goes, no, Sean, I could knock it out in five.  He goes – but then he said something, and you referenced this in your press – when you were filling in for Karoline.  And you said, imagine the world with a nuclear-armed Iran.  And forget about the strait.  They would hold the entire world hostage. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  That’s right.  

QUESTION:  There always seems to come out of nowhere these bizarre conspiracy theories – oh, the President is doing this for Israel or for a Fox News host or Bibi Netanyahu.  I ask everybody:  Did he have any choice, based on what Steve Witkoff told us? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  No, look, every president in the last 20 years has been worried about the Iran nuclear program.  Obama did a nuclear deal with him because he was worried about it – not a good nuclear deal, but he made one.  The President reversed it and imposed crippling sanctions and took out Soleimani, who was a threat to the United States.  Joe Biden was begging to get back into a nuclear deal with them.  The whole world – the French, the Germans, the UK – they imposed new sanctions on Iran last year, snapback sanctions, because of the nuclear threat.  The whole world has seen Iran was building up a conventional capability where they would have so many missiles and so many drones that they could overwhelm anybody’s defenses. 

Once they had that, nobody could do anything about their nuclear program because they would say if you attack our nuclear program, we will wipe out six countries in the Gulf region and you won’t be able to defend against it, you won’t have enough Patriots, mainly* because you get these swarms of drones, these swarms of rockets.  They were on the verge, and a year from now they would have been at that point.  The President said that’s an intolerable risk. 

People are struggling to make that connection, but the connection is very real.  They were building a – such a high number, they were going to have so many drones and missiles that no one can attack Iran because the result would be catastrophic for the region.  And once they had that immunity, then they would break out towards a weapon.  We knew that.  The President is not going to allow that to happen under his watch. 

QUESTION:  Yeah.  Let’s go to the Western Hemisphere.  And what is the relationship with Venezuela?  And I know it’s got to be an issue near and dear to your heart.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  I know your family background, and that’s Cuba. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, on Venezuela it’s been four months, so I think we’ve made some steady progress on improving Venezuela.  Look, we’re trying to normalize that place.  This is a place where – a country of incredible wealth, but all the wealth was being stolen.  It wasn’t going to benefit the Venezuelan people.  So we’ve created mechanisms.  All the money they make on oil now goes into a bank account in New York, and it’s audited by KPMG, and it’s being used to pay the salaries of teachers and firefighters and police officers and university professors.  So for the first time in over a decade, the wealth of the country is actually benefitting the people of Venezuela.  But there’s more work to be done. 

Ultimately, as we work through this process, we will have to reach a stage of transition where you’re going to have to normalize your government.  There’s going to have to be a process that’s legitimate that people look at and say this is – this is a legitimate, permanent government – presidency, elections, things of that nature.  That moment has to arrive, but it has to be – we don’t want to wait too long.  We want to see it happen.  But you don’t want to move too fast either because the whole thing can break.  So it’s a difficult thing to manage, but it’s only four months in, and I’m very – I think we should be pleased.  Venezuela is a better place today than it was four months ago, but it needs to continue to stay on that path.

And the case of Cuba is a very different situation.  There is no economy in Cuba.  To the extent there’s any wealth in Cuba, it doesn’t go – it doesn’t – forget about it doesn’t go to the people.  It doesn’t even go to the government.  The wealth is controlled by a private – by a company owned by military generals.  They take all the money.  They’re sitting on billions of dollars, okay?  This is a country where people are literally now eating garbage from the streets, but they have a company that controls all of the moneymaking there that’s sitting on $15-16 billion.

So it’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it.  I wish it were different.  But I believe – it’s my personal opinion – you cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge of it.  That’s what’s going to have to change because these people have proven incapable.  I hope I’m wrong.  We’ll give them a chance.  But I don’t think it’s going to happen.  I don’t think we’re going to be able to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge in that regime.

QUESTION:  If these people are not in charge, I mean, I can envision American wealth and companies – it would be – it could become —

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, I —

QUESTION:  — the destination —

SECRETARY RUBIO:  The one thing Cuba would enjoy is an enormous expatriate community, Cuban Americans that would go back and invest.  But I think there would be interest globally.  Look, they have significant mineral deposits in Cuba.  One of the – and some of the rare earth minerals, some of the best in the world.  They have, obviously, an incredible opportunity with tourism, with agriculture – very rich farmland.  So Cuba should not be a poor country.  Its people should not be starving.  Its people should be prosperous.  And what’s most interesting is you see Cubans everywhere in the world – in the United States, but you see them in Europe, you see them in Panama.  Cubans leave Cuba, they go to other countries, and they become successful.  The only place in the world where Cubans can’t seem to prosper and succeed is in Cuba.

(Break.)

QUESTION:  So Vladimir Putin recently said – and I thought this was interesting – that the war with Ukraine may be coming to an end.  One of the things – I always talk a lot about the next generation of weaponry.  I think we see that on display in our conflict with Iran that we’ve had.  I mean Midnight Hammer, Epic Fury are two examples.  What the Israelis have done, more examples.  But what’s interesting – Ukraine has really impressed me.  They seem to be creating the next generation of drone every four to ten days, and between drones and robots, who would have thought four and a half years ago —

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  — they would still be in this fight?  I wouldn’t – I didn’t expect that.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, there’s no doubt that the necessity of fighting this war has caused the Ukrainians to develop new tactics, new techniques, new equipment, new technology that is creating a sort of hybrid asymmetrical warfare.  That’s impressive.  No doubt about it.  I mean, if you look at the Russians are losing five times as many soldiers a month as the Ukrainians are, and Ukraine is a smaller country and a smaller army for that matter – although the Ukrainian armed forces are the strongest, most powerful armed forces in all of Europe, just to be clear, right now – obviously because a lot of the assistance they’ve gotten, but also because of the battlefield experience that they’ve gained.

As far as the broader conflict, the President just wants to see the war end.  He thinks it’s a crazy war.  And he’s right.  I mean, you have people dying in massive numbers on both sides.  Ukraine is going to spend two decades rebuilding.  The damage to the Russian economy is extraordinary.  The Russians are losing 15-20,000 soldiers a month dead.  Not injured, dead.  It’s a bad war. 

And we stand prepared, the President stands prepared, his team stands prepared to facilitate a diplomatic end to the war.  Unfortunately, we’ve lost some momentum over the last few months for a variety of reasons: the Ukrainians feel increasingly confident about their battlefield position; they got through the winter; the Russians feel a little bit optimistic because the price of oil is up.  But hopefully, whether it’s Vladimir Putin’s statement or anything else, hopefully we’ll reach a point here soon where both parties re-engage.  And we’re prepared to play the role to mediate and to bring that to a conclusion.  I think we’re the only country in the world that can.  If somebody else wants to try, they should do it, but both sides keep telling us we’re the only ones that can.

In the end, the President wants to see the war end.  And if there is something he can do and we can to help it end, we’re going to do it. 

QUESTION:  So you had an opportunity recently to meet with Pope Leo from Chicago.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  An American.  The only thing that surprised me about his conflict – and I went to Catholic schools for 12 years.  I studied Latin.  I studied theology, et cetera.  And what, he said God doesn’t support any conflict.  Am I – the God of the Old Testament, same as the God from the New Testament; I could start with David and Goliath.  I’m not sure if I agreed with that, and I got killed in the media – how dare I challenge the Pope?  But how did the meeting go?  Take us inside there.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  It was a positive meeting.  Look, I think I always start with a premise that the Papacy and the Pope is not a political office.  It’s covered by political reporters as a political office, but it’s not.  It is the – it’s the Vicar of Christ.  For those of us who are Roman Catholic, it’s the belief that he is the successor of Peter on Earth.  And so now, in that realm you’re going to make statements about social policy and even global policies that are going to touch on politics, and consistently the Church has said that they want to promote peace, that they’d prefer to avoid wars, they don’t like wars.  And that’s been a position for a long time. 

Obviously, our perspective is different in that regard.  I agree; we wouldn’t want wars either.  We’re not – I don’t think we’re in favor of war.  But for a nation-state, which is different from a religious office – for a nation-state, there are threats to your security and to the well-being of your people that have to be addressed – ideally through a diplomatic means, but there are conflicts and there are issues in the world that cannot be solved diplomatically no matter how hard you try.

There’s been over a decade of work done to try to diplomatically solve Iran’s desire and ambition to have a nuclear weapons program.  We haven’t gotten any result.  What was the diplomatic solution for an Adolf Hiter, as an example?  There probably – there was none, right?  And it unfortunately led to a war.  So that’s where I think the realm of the geopolitical is different and has to – we are obviously guided by our faith and we’re instructed by our faith.  That’s the compass by which we live our lives.  We also have an obligation to the national security of our country, and that has to be taken into account.  That’s our primary job, is to keep Americans safe.  And that’s why we’re involved in Iran.  That’s why we’re involved in anything we do around the world.

QUESTION:  What about the Pope?  Was he receptive to your comments and what you were saying?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Oh, I found him very – it’s very unique because traditionally you’re meeting with a pope and he’s going to have an accent or he’s going to have an interpreter.  This is an American Pope.  I mean, we spoke.  We spoke for over an hour.  We talked about a lot of topics, by the way. 

QUESTION:  How about Chicago baseball?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  I think he likes the White Sox. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  He does.  And – but this is a Pope, by the way, that understands the United States very well, obviously.  He follows our news very carefully.  He’s quite aware of current events in our country.  But also we had a lot of other things to talk about.  He’s concerned about religious freedom.  He just came back from Africa, where the church is growing very fast, but ISIS and other terrorist elements are threatening Christians in Africa.  I think he’s concerned about events in Latin America.  He just had a visit from the bishops of Venezuela, so he wanted to inquire as to how I thought that was going. 

We had actually worked with the church in Cuba.  After the hurricane we distributed – or tried to distribute over $6 million of humanitarian aid via the Catholic Church.  We’ve offered to do more.  We’ve offered to distribute $100 million of humanitarian aid to the Cuban people through the church, and the regime has denied it – the Cuban regime.  So there was a lot we covered.

QUESTION:  And this thought—I don’t know, I think just to be Secretary of State, that’s a pretty cool jacket they gave you. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, it was a gift that somebody gave me, and it’s good to wear it on the plane.

QUESTION:  Are you in – look, you were a senator for all these years.  I’ve known you for so many years.  We’ve had a friendship for so many years.  How do you compare this job to everything else you’ve done? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, it’s quite different, right?  The work of a legislator involves constituent service, and it involves writing of legislation, committee meetings, oversight.  And I enjoyed doing all of that, and it was an important era in our life.

This was a very different opportunity.  This is in the Executive Branch.  Here you’re actually executing on laws, and you’re – basically, you’re executing the President’s foreign policy.  So I enjoy the role, I enjoy the job, and I enjoy working for this President because he’s willing to do what others talk about but don’t do.  When you say, “Well, we can’t do that,” and you’ll say, “Why?”  That’s his question.  Why?  Why can’t we do that?  Why hasn’t this been done before?  He is willing to do what others are not willing to do.  He is willing to solve unfinished business and not leave it for the next guy or gal.  And I admire that, and it’s a lot of fun to be a part of it.

QUESTION:  You know what’s frustrated me is there are some that interpret the Trump doctrine, as I call it, as isolationism.  Well, he took out the ISIS caliphate, took our Soleimani and Baghdadi, dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan, Midnight Hammer, and he will wrap up Epic Fury, and he did make the raid on Maduro.  But I see three lessons he’s learned in history, and this is the last, last question.  And I see that he saw that over a hundred million souls died in the last century.  So if you can take out or neutralize a threat ahead of time, it’s smart.  I also think he learned, from Reagan, peace through strength.  He built up the military in his first term.  And I love the idea that he doesn’t want to be an occupational force and doesn’t want forever wars.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Do you – is that —

SECRETARY RUBIO:  I do.  And I would just add one more element to it.  America is going to be engaged in the world.  This is not about turning inward.  But we are going to engage in the world based on what’s good for America, what’s in the national interest of the United States.  Does what we’re doing make the country safer, more secure, more prosperous?  If it does, it’s in our national interest.  If it doesn’t, it might be a nice thing to do but it won’t be as high up on the priority list. 

So that’s where I think you see him engaging in the world.  He doesn’t engage in every conflict and in every topic.  I mean, we have an opinion.  We may try to do something in the margins.  But he gets engaged and spends his time focused on things around the world that directly impact the security and the prosperity of the American people.  If there’s some place in the world where Americans’ business can prosper and therefore help our economy, the President is engaged.  If it’s trade to benefit our factories, our workers, the President is engaged.  If it’s a threat to our national security, whether it’s now or something that looms three years down the road, the President is not going to leave it as unfinished business; he engages.

QUESTION:  I’m worried about NATO.  I felt that they didn’t have the moral clarity on the number-one state sponsor of terror.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  That’s troubling to me. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, the problem with NATO – and I’ve been a supporter of NATO throughout my career in the Senate.  And one of the reasons why I supported NATO was because it gave us basing rights.  It allowed us to have bases in Europe that we could use in a contingency like something in the Middle East where you could have planes flying from some country in Europe and actually protecting our national interest in the Middle East, as an example, or in Africa. 

And so when you have NATO partners denying you the use of those bases – when the primary reason why NATO is good for America is now being denied to us by Spain, as an example – then what’s the purpose of the Alliance?  It starts becoming a “they’re allies when they want to be” kind of thing.

QUESTION:  Paper tiger.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  And look, to be fair, there are countries in NATO that were very helpful to us.  Just singling one out – Portugal.  They said yes before we even asked – told them what the question was. 

QUESTION:  Poland.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Poland.  So there are countries – Romania, Bulgaria.  Others like Spain have been atrocious, just horrifying.  So I do think there are some very legitimate questions to ask about NATO, and that is:  What is the purpose of being in an alliance whose benefit to us is these basing rights if, in a time of conflict like the one we’ve had with Iran, they can deny us the use of those bases?  So why are we there for?  Only to protect them but not to further our national interest?  This is a very legitimate question that we need to address.

QUESTION:  And we pay two-thirds of the bill. 

Mr. Secretary, great to see you.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.  All right. 

QUESTION:  Thank you so much for your time.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.