A Weekend Reid: Mister Cellophane

Marco Rubio is the most soulless member of the fascist Trump regime

May 31, 2025

person behind fog glass — Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

I used to cover Marco Rubio back in Florida, so I feel like I know what he is.

Rubio is, to put it kindly, a “careerist.” He will do whatever it takes, no matter how low he has to stoop, to achieve the power and influence he craves. Much like Lindsey Graham, and so many other Republicans, he is more than willing to debase and humiliate himself for Donald Trump, or allow Trump to debase and humiliate him, just to sit at the feet of power in hopes of one day crawling up its leg, nestling into its lap, and one day inheriting it for himself.

Like his multiple shifts in religion, Rubio has been every kind of Republican. He’s been a cold warrior, Reagan Republican, a pro-immigration, Jeb Bush Republican, an anti-immigration, “tea party” Republican, an anti-Trump, small-d*ck joke-swinging Republican, and finally a boot licking Trump lackey maga zombie Republican, which is his current iteration.

At one point, during his Reagan-Bush, normie interregnum, many of my colleagues in the mainstream media were obsessed with Marco Rubio; gushily declaring him to be “the Latin Obama.” They seemed to believe, in all sincerity, that he would inevitably be president. I was often the lone dissenting voice in the newsroom, breaking it to my media friends that this would never happen. Rubio would never, and will never, be the president of the United States. He’s too squirly, stands for too little, and is too casually disloyal to everyone who ever stood with him (just ask friends of Jeb Bush in Miami or at this point, any Cuban exile down there.) And just politically, he has so little charisma, dignity, or raw political talent, he just doesn’t have the range.

Keep in mind that a cold lump of spoiled mash potatoes could get elected in Florida, so long as the smelly mush is Republican. This is a state full of old people, poor people and retired veterans that elected the guy whose company defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE in record fashion — not just to the governorship, which he essentially bought, but also to the Senate. Floridians will literally elect any Republican. So Rubio’s electoral success is as meaningless as if he was a WASP from Mississippi. He’s also Latino in a country that really seems to hate Latinos and where a whole lot of folks wrongly believe that most of them are in the country illegally because they somehow missed the memo that much of this land they live in used to be Mexico … whose people are, by the way, not the same as Cubans. But I digress…

Read my previous piece: The ongoing humiliation of Marco Rubio: a metaphor for America

The hearings

I have to say that even for me, an O.G. Rubio critic … the latest series of public hearings where he performed his new, Trumpy persona, represents a new low. In his round robin of public testimony before the House and Senate, Rubio revealed himself to be more than just a fellow soulless race/culture warrior like Tom Homan or utterly creepy Stephen Miller. Or even just a clumsy racial buffoon, like Donald Trump.

Unlike those other middling men, Marco Rubio is a complete sellout. He has officially sold what’s left of his earthly soul to Donald Trump and maga, such that he no longer believes in anything he used to claim to … from supporting Ukraine in its fight to be free from Russian land-grabbing, to fully embracing the foreign aid mission of the State Department and USAID, and even his pretension of defending free speech and the First Amendment — all turn out to have all been ephemeral and situational.

He now proudly defends shipping people to his friend Nayib Bukele’s prisons in El Salvador without trials. He has let the regime make him the swarthy face of the Orwellian policy of denying visas based on race and ideology — while his boss, Trump, casts himself as the savior of persecuted white people around the world. Even Rubio’s support for his own people: Cubans, and other Latinos, such as Venezuelans, who have come to the U.S. fleeing oppression, turns out to have been a fraud. To them, these days, he is not the Latino Obama. He’s the Latino Clarence Thomas — an absolute, self-serving traitor. He won’t even stand up for a right wing Cuban rapper named El Funky, who is set to be returned to Cuba by the regime Rubio serves with such indignity; despite that musician passionately loving Donald Trump, and likely facing prison if he is returned to Havana. I guess El Funky is El-f-ked.

There’s a saying that’s popular among people who are familiar with this man and it goes: if you’re counting on Marco Rubio to save you, you’re already dead. And here’s another:

When Marco Rubio tells you who he is at the moment, believe him until he changes his mind again…

Back to the hearings. Here is Lil’ Marco (I wonder if Trump still calls him that…?) casually brushing off the literal deaths that are already happening, and will continue to happen, due to his standing by and letting Elon Musk and doge take a chainsaw to USAID:

Over to the House, where when it comes to the First Amendment, and the right of international students to speak their minds, Rubio was a no on that one, too. And proudly so. White Afrkaaners who post antisemitic stuff however? All good:

And he’s doubling down:

And it’s not just op-ed writers who think maybe Palestinians shouldn’t be bombed into vapor by Israeli defense forces, using 2,000 pound U.S.-supplied bombs. Rubio is now overseeing an attempt to enact what amounts to a new Chinese Exclusion Act:

And this from the party that claims that they nuked affirmative action in large part to save Asian students from discrimination…

Having taught at a couple of colleges — Syracuse and Howard University, I can attest that Chinese students form a significant share of the international student population. And the Chinese collegians whom I have taught have been among the most diligent and determined in my classes; particularly the ones facing a significant language and cultural barrier in my Race, Gender and Media courses.

But let’s go on.

Here’s the moment Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia gave Rubio the chance to explain why his State Department and the regime are allowing only South African white Afrikaaners to claim the status of “refugee.”

And here’s Rubio making the same defense in the House, to Rep. Jonathan Jackson of Illinois, to whom he also dismissed the value of diversity inside the State Department, where correct me if I’m wrong, it’s probably a good idea to have folks around who speak the languages and relate to the international cultures they’re dealing with…

I don’t know if Marco Rubio, who to the eternal shame of both the Democratic and Republican parties, was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate (though a handful of Democrats now belatedly express regret…) is enjoying being Trump’s lackey secretary of state, and all the other jobs that have been dropped into his lap, due to the sheer lack of qualified adults available to serve this diabolical regime (which has apparently run out of reality show stars to hire and so is moving on to right wing conspiracy theorist podcasters…) But his soulless droning and temper tantrums before his former congressional colleagues in defense of evil, are giving deeply 1930s “just following orders” vibes.

Shame on Marco Rubio. And may he live to one day look in a mirror and see the cellophane man on the other side … and shudder in horror.

But hey, at least he’s not drugged up and weeing himself…