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Rubio: State Department's Job Is to Implement the President's Foreign Policy

December 22, 2025 · U.S. Department of State · 0:01:48

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department cooperates and works with senators, particularly chairmen of key committees, even where there is not agreement on everything, noting that people can say and do things in private that politics prevents them from saying or doing in public.

Rubio then made his central point: the foreign policy apparatus, he said, is not its own government, and neither is the Secretary of State. He described being nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and appointed by the President — but the person the American people elected President and commander in chief, he said, is Donald J. Trump. His job and the administration’s job, he said, is to implement the President’s foreign policy: to provide advice, counsel, ideas, and options for implementing the President’s vision.

He said the Constitution did not contemplate electing a president and then installing a State Department to undermine him, called the contrary idea ridiculous, and said that implementing the President’s foreign policy is the job he is proud to do, while acknowledging a lot of progress and a lot more work ahead.

Why it matters

The clip is Rubio’s constitutional framing of his own role — a Secretary of State as implementer of an elected president’s foreign policy rather than an independent foreign-policy center — aimed at critics of the department’s direction.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Implementing President Trump’s Foreign Policy”, 2025-12-22 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-12-22). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.