Marco Rubio (R-FL; photo, left) is leaving the U.S. senate to become Trump 2.0’s secretary of state.
I don’t want to dwell too much on Rubio, because this posting is about Lara Trump, but that doesn’t strike me as a great career move.
At age 51, Rubio is young enough to run for president again. And granted, as secretary of state, he’ll come face-to-face with foreign policy.
But it’ll be Trump’s foreign policy, and he’ll be a mere water boy, because he won’t have the autonomy cabinet secretaries typically have over their departments. Trump is different from other presidents; he’s jealous of his power, and micromanages everyone under him.
Also, while Rubio may rack up some foreign policy experience, a cabinet position isn’t typically a launching pad for the presidency; and working for Trump is high-risk, because Trump eats up and spits out cabinet members on a regular basis.
If I were Rubio, I would’ve stayed in the senate, where he has a secure sinecure. Since graduating from law school, politics is the only job he’s ever had, and there’s really no higher place for him to go. He may hope to be president someday, but voters already looked him over, and weren’t excited by what they saw. He’s not going to be president.
Whether he’s miscalculating or not, he’s vacating his senate seat on January 20, 2025, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will appoint someone to occupy the seat until a special election is held in 2026. That means this person will be a fill-in for roughly 20 months until someone is elected for the remaining 2 years of Rubio’s senate term expiring in January of 2029 (details here).
This is a fairly safe Republican seat, and the person appointed would have a leg up to secure the GOP nomination to run in the 2026 special election, but wouldn’t be guaranteed of being nominated or elected. DeSantis, who’s term-limited as governor, may want that seat for himself (see story here), in which case it makes sense to pick a placeholder who either won’t run in 2026 or whom he can defeat in the primary.
Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump (the second-dumbest of Trump’s kids), had been floated as a possible replacement for Rubio in the senate. Her only real qualification for the job is her Trump family connection.
She has a degree in culinary arts, her work experience is in television, lately she’s been a fashion horse (photo, left), and she’s never been elected to any office and has no governing experience. She has no real qualifications to represent an entire state in the U.S. senate.
But you can say the same thing about Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach who has the political acumen of a tree stump; Katie Britt, a freshman senator without previous political experience who blew her assignment to respond the President Biden’s 2024 state of the union speech (details here); and any number of other high-ranking amateur politicians.
And, after all, name recognition and access to donors counts for a lot in American politics, which isn’t exactly a meritocracy.
But Lara Trump isn’t destined to be a senator, temporary or otherwise. On Saturday, December 21, 2024, she posted on “X” she’s removing herself from consideration to be Rubio’s fill-in “after an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many” (see story here).
It shouldn’t have taken that much thought. Not if you take the U.S. senate at all seriously as a deliberative body at the highest level of our three-branch democracy with responsibilities for approving treaties, presidential appointments, and passing legislation, all of which is over this purely nepotistic candidate’s head. The job, if it’s to be done well, or even half-assed, requires more than a “Trump” last name by marriage.
She isn’t someone who could, or would, get to the U.S. senate under her own steam, even with her name change (she used to be known as Lara Yunaska). And while president-elect might like having her in the senate, DeSantis, who makes the appointment, doesn’t even like the Trumps and they don’t like him. This, more than anything, is probably what made her realize she isn’t going to be a U.S. senator.