President Trump joked during the inaugural meeting of his “Board of Peace” on Thursday that he nearly “fired” Secretary of State Marco Rubio following the diplomat’s highly acclaimed speech at the Munich Security Conference. While convening world leaders at the U.S. Institute of Peace to discuss Gaza’s reconstruction, the president sarcastically remarked that Rubio did himself so “proud” that people began asking why the president himself couldn’t deliver such addresses, prompting Trump to tease, “Marco, don’t do any better than you did, please. Because if you do, you’re out of here.”
The lighthearted exchange followed Rubio’s weekend address in Germany, where he rejected the “dangerous delusion” of a borderless global order and criticized past “mass migration” policies while simultaneously calling for a renewed transatlantic alliance based on shared Western civilization. Despite the jovial warning, Trump praised the standing ovation Rubio received a stark contrast to the cooler reception Vice President JD Vance faced a year prior and emphasized that his administration remains committed to a vision of national sovereignty and “renewal and restoration” alongside European allies.
