Rubio Seeks Cease-Fire in Ukraine After Reaching His Own With Musk

Before embarking on high-stakes negotiations in Saudi Arabia and Canada this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio engaged in personal diplomacy to reinforce his position within the Trump administration.

Mr. Rubio traveled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where discussions were set to begin on Tuesday, focusing on encouraging Ukraine to negotiate a settlement with Russia. From there, he planned to head to Canada for a gathering of top diplomats from the Group of 7 allied nations.

His diplomatic travels followed a tense exchange with Elon Musk during a White House cabinet meeting last week, after which he joined both Mr. Musk and President Trump for dinner on Saturday night.

The dinner, held at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, marked a temporary truce between Mr. Trump’s top diplomat and the billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX. Their reconciliation extended to amicable social media exchanges in the days that followed.

For those closely monitoring Mr. Trump’s personality-driven administration for indications of who holds the president’s favor, the events suggested that Mr. Rubio’s influence might be stronger than many U.S. officials and foreign diplomats had previously assumed.

This shift in perception was a welcome one for Mr. Rubio, who has long faced skepticism about his standing. Mr. Trump had famously mocked him as “Little Marco” during their 2016 presidential rivalry and later appointed a series of special envoys to oversee key diplomatic areas—covering the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, and ambiguous “special missions”—leading some to question what role was left for the Secretary of State.

Since then, Mr. Rubio has faced criticism for seemingly abandoning long-held positions, including his support for strong U.S. foreign aid and Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression.

His perceived shift was highlighted earlier this month when a video of him during a heated February 28 Oval Office argument between Mr. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went viral. When a reporter from a pro-Trump media outlet taunted Mr. Zelensky—dressed in his signature military attire—by asking if he even owned a suit, Mr. Rubio’s strained expression and hunched posture on a yellow sofa became an online meme. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough dubbed it “a soul-crushing experience for a lifelong Russia hawk.”

For the second consecutive week, Mr. Rubio was also satirized on “Saturday Night Live” as a submissive Trump loyalist subjected to dismissive treatment and erratic commentary from both the president and Mr. Musk.

Despite frustrations within the administration over Mr. Musk’s impulsive leadership style and sweeping federal job cuts, few officials are willing to challenge the world’s richest man, who remains a key Trump ally and controls a major social media platform.

However, when Mr. Musk criticized Mr. Rubio during Thursday’s meeting for not implementing deeper cuts at the State Department, Mr. Rubio, a former Florida senator, responded with sarcasm and indignation. His retort earned praise from Mr. Trump, who commended him for doing a “great job.”

The three-way dinner on Saturday night further signaled that the president expected peaceful coexistence between Mr. Musk and Mr. Rubio.

By Monday, the two appeared to mend fences on social media. Mr. Rubio posted on X, the platform owned by Mr. Musk, announcing that he had completed a review of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts and had terminated 83% of them for failing to serve “core national interests of the United States.”

Notably, he did not mention his frustration over Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which had aggressively dismantled USAID—an agency Mr. Rubio had previously supported.

Mr. Musk simply replied, “Tough, but necessary. Good working with you.”

A day earlier, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Musk had teamed up in an online exchange against Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, a key NATO ally. Mr. Sikorski had accused Mr. Musk of threatening to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Starlink satellite network, which is critical to the country’s military operations.

When Mr. Musk wrote on X that Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse” without Starlink, Mr. Sikorski responded on Sunday, accusing the billionaire of “threatening the victim of aggression.”

Mr. Rubio swiftly defended Mr. Musk, posting that Mr. Sikorski was “just making things up” and should “say thank you” for Starlink’s crucial role in supporting Ukraine.

Mr. Musk then escalated the exchange, directing a pointed remark at Mr. Sikorski: “Be quiet, small man.” He added that he had no intention of canceling Starlink for Ukraine, regardless of policy disagreements.

This sharp exchange marked a departure from the cordial tone Mr. Rubio had struck when he hosted Mr. Sikorski for talks in Washington just a month prior.

Yet, it aligned with Mr. Rubio’s recent shift toward reinforcing Mr. Trump’s antagonism toward traditional U.S. allies—including Ukraine, whose president Mr. Rubio has criticized in recent days, mirroring Mr. Trump’s rhetoric.

As he and other senior Trump officials prepare for negotiations with Ukrainian leaders in Saudi Arabia, even some of Mr. Rubio’s previous supporters are frustrated by his apparent willingness to pressure Ukraine into making concessions rather than holding Russia accountable.

These shifts have caused growing unease among American diplomats.

At the State Department headquarters in Washington and in embassies worldwide, officials are also increasingly alarmed by internal discussions about cutting the department’s budget, workforce, and diplomatic missions.

Many are unsure how much authority Mr. Rubio actually has over his own team.

They question whether he exerts real control over Pete Marocco, a controversial State Department appointee who, along with Mr. Musk, has spearheaded efforts to dismantle USAID.

Further fueling concerns, Darren Beattie, the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy, has a history of ridiculing Mr. Rubio online. According to a CNN report, he once called him “low IQ” and resurfaced a false, homophobic rumor about him. Mr. Beattie, who had been dismissed from a prior Trump administration role after attending a conference with white nationalists, has also posted inflammatory remarks about race and governance.

Last October, he wrote online: “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

Mr. Beattie is not the only Rubio staffer with a history of mocking him. A Politico investigation found at least seven instances between 2014 and 2016 in which State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce had publicly disparaged him during his political rivalry with Mr. Trump.

Despite these internal political challenges, Mr. Rubio remains a key figure in advancing Mr. Trump’s policy agenda.

Over the weekend, he invoked an obscure legal statute to order the Department of Homeland Security to arrest and deport Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and recent Columbia University graduate student, who had led peaceful pro-Palestinian campus protests.

On Sunday, Mr. Rubio posted online, stating, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

Even so, speculation continues over how long Mr. Rubio will last as Secretary of State. In Trump’s first term, few officials with Rubio’s internationalist leanings and bipartisan support remained in their roles for long.

Perhaps most tellingly, Mr. Trump has joked multiple times about how many Democrats supported Mr. Rubio’s confirmation. During an Oval Office meeting last month, he admitted, “I was a little nervous about it.”

He echoed the sentiment in his address to Congress last week, saying, “Marco has been amazing.” Then, with a grin, he added, “And he was confirmed unanimously—which either makes me very happy or very concerned.”