Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies before the Senate Committee for Foreign Relations on Tuesday.
Jose Luis Magana / AP
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Jose Luis Magana / AP
Secretary of state Marco Rubio had exchanges with Democratic senators on Tuesday, who asked him about Trump administration policies ranging from diplomacy with Russia to help cuts, refugees and more.
Rubio defended decisions, including major budget cuts and the dismantling of the American Agency for International Development (USAID) during a hearing of the Senate Committee for Foreign Relations.
Several senators mentioned that they had voted for the former Republican senator of Florida to be confirmed as Secretary of State in January, but said that it was not Marco Rubio with whom they remembered having worked.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-MD., Said he thought that Rubio would defend democracy and human rights in the world.
“You didn’t do it. You did the opposite,” said Van Hollen. “And you used to speak with conviction of the importance of foreign aid as a tool to advance American values and interests. Then you stood while Elon Musk took a chainsaw for the USAID and other assistance programs. This left an amazing toll.”
Van Hollen said people in Sudan, for example, died because emergency kitchens were forced to close.
He also criticized Rubio to accelerate white Afrikaners from South Africa for American refugee status, as “making fun of the refugee process of our country”, while the administration blocked other refugees already approved for admission.
“And I must tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for the Secretary of State,” he said.
Rubio replied by ridiculing Van Hollen’s recent trip to Salvador to meet a man that the Trump administration admitted that she was wrongly expelled. And he repeated the allegation of the administration that the man belonged to a gang.
“We expelled gang members … including the one you had a Margarita,” said Rubio. The lawyers of the deportee Van Hollen met, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, denies that he is a member of a gang.
Van Hollen protested against the chairman of the Jim Risch committee, R-Assoho: “Mr. President, he cannot make any not founded claims like this.”
It was an unusually heated exchange in a committee where Rubio was once a member.
Republican members expressed their support to the Secretary of State. President Risch said that the administration had “accomplished incredible things in a short time”, including the release of American hostages captured by Hamas, a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, as well as efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
The committee’s classification democrat, the New Hampshire Senator, Jeanne Shaheen, nevertheless toasted Rubio about the awareness of the administration to the Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“What Vladimir Putin does is playing for the time and he plays the president as a violin,” she said. “And more … he plays longer, the more opportunities he has to win a territory in Ukraine and the more difficult it will be to put it at the table.”
President Trump’s telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin did not produce an immediate cease-fire as Ukraine and his allies hoped for it, Putin rather offering other talks.
Shaheen said the administration gave its lever effect. But Rubio defended the efforts of the administration, saying that he continued to put pressure on Russia while supporting Ukraine.
“Well, I do not agree with this analogy with a violin”, because the truth is that, when Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, he had the same set of sanctions on him that he has always had since the start of this conflict. And Ukraine still obtained armaments and expeditions from us and our allies, “he said.
“What the president tries to do is put an end to a war,” said Rubio. Shaheen replied by saying that it is something “that we all support”.
The Republicans and Democrats have pressure for more sanctions against Russia. Rubio said President Trump thinks that if the United States is starting to threaten sanctions, the Russians will stop talking.
Trump obtained bipartite support for the lifting of sanctions against the new Syrian government, although Rubio has issued a disastrous warning when this country could go.
“It is our evaluation that, frankly, the transitional authority, taking into account the challenges they face, are perhaps weeks – not several months – far from the potential collapse and a large -scale civil war with epic proportions, essentially the country that separates,” said Rubio.
He said that the United States hoped to prevent by engaging Syria’s transitional leaders, who include former Al-Qaida affiliates who fought to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad last year.
