Do we like Marco Rubio?
Our score: 3 out of 10. Real harm in his own acts on LGBTQ+ rights and climate, with some real good on human rights abroad alongside.
Rubio was born in Miami to Cuban parents, a father who tended bar and a mother who worked as a hotel maid. The family spent years in Las Vegas on hotel jobs before returning to Florida when he was 14. He climbed from West Miami commissioner to Florida House speaker, then the US Senate in 2010. Trump's pick for Secretary of State followed in 2024.
As Secretary of State he has become the quarterback of Trump's foreign policy. He played an outsized role in the US operation in Venezuela, and after it he called Cuba's government a “huge problem” on NBC. By late May he was at the centre of talks over the Iran war and Cuba, with 2028 presidential speculation swirling around him.
Now the harm check, and it isn't pretty on LGBTQ+ rights. In 2022 he waved off the Respect for Marriage Act as a waste of the Senate's time. LGBTQ Nation's account lists his February 2023 bill with Senator Jim Banks to bar openly trans people from the military, plus his backing of a ban on trans women in women's sport. That is his own acts, not just company he keeps.
On the planet he has moved from calling for clean energy as Florida speaker to opposing climate policy. DeSmog reports a 7% lifetime League of Conservation Voters score and a 0% for 2024. As Secretary of State, the department closed its Office of Global Change. Politico reported in March 2025 that LGBTQ+ sections would be cut from the annual human rights report, and the department wouldn't preview it.
On straight-talking, PolitiFact's scorecard on Rubio shows 174 rated claims: 59 True or Mostly True, 37 Half True, and 78 Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire. Examples include a June 2024 estimate of 20 to 30 million people in the US illegally, which it rated False, and a May 2026 claim about Cuba's blackouts, rated Half-True. That's a mixed bag, not a pattern of nonsense.
There is real good here. Rubio was lead sponsor of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, both of which passed unanimously and became law. He also topped the Senate on a religious freedom scorecard for the 116th Congress. For people persecuted abroad, that counts.