The Senate voted Monday to confirm Marco Rubio as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, the first senior Cabinet official in the new administration to be approved by the chamber.
The confirmation vote came just hours after Trump was sworn in as president. The overwhelmingly bipartisan vote was 99-0, with no senator voting against the nomination.
Rubio has served as a Republican senator from Florida since 2011, and his nomination received strong support from a number of Senate Democrats, who called their colleague highly qualified for the role.
Rubio has gone from Trump adversary to ally in recent years, part of a remarkable political turnaround. He will now play a key role as a senior official in the new Trump administration.
The two had a bitter rivalry during the 2016 GOP presidential primary, with Rubio calling Trump a “crook” while Trump derisively called him “Little Marco.”
After his failed bid in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, Rubio honed his foreign policy credentials as the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, while building relationships within his party and across the aisle.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has nominated state Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill the seat that will be vacated by Rubio.
Rubio’s nomination received a warm reception from many Senate Democrats. During her confirmation hearing, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Rubio “well qualified to serve as secretary of state.”
During questions from senators, Rubio expressed support for NATO – as well as a bipartisan law he co-sponsored that states the United States cannot withdraw from the alliance without approval of the Senate or an act of Congress.
Rubio also spoke about the need for the United States to take a tough stance on China during his confirmation hearing, calling out the Chinese Communist Party a “powerful” and “dangerous” adversary.
“They are a technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor, an economic competitor, a geopolitical competitor, a scientific competitor. Now, in all areas, this is an extraordinary challenge and one that I believe will define the 21st century” , Rubio said.
“We allowed them to get away with it, and frankly, the Chinese did what any country in the world would do given these opportunities, they took advantage of it, so now we have to deal with its consequences,” he said.
“Much of what we need to do to confront China is happening here at home. It’s not just abroad, it’s also here at home,” he said. “We must rebuild our domestic industrial capacity and we must ensure that the United States is not dependent on any other country for any of our critical supply chains. »
In response to questions about Russia’s war against Ukraine, Rubio said it was “unrealistic to believe” that Ukraine could push Russian forces back to where they were before the 2022 invasion and that the position official statement from the United States should be that the war ends.
Rubio added that he and Trump agreed on the need to end the war and criticized the Biden administration for failing to set a clear “end goal” for the war.
“What (Russian President) Vladimir Putin did is unacceptable, there’s no doubt about it, but this war must end, and I think the official policy of the United States should be to want to see it end,” he said. Rubio said. .
CNN’s Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.