Marco Rubio has heretofore avoided breaking the norm against Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors engaging in explicitly partisan political activities during an election campaign (as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Todd Blanche have repeatedly done). It appears that he is about to do so, or at least walk the line in an uncomfortable way, when he appears with President Trump in Texas to welcome an oil tanker carrying Venezuelan crude oil to be refined in one of the key swing states in this year’s contest for control of the United States Senate. The appearance will be at Port Arthur. Later in the day Trump will hold rallies in Corpus Cristi and Lubbock and although it isn’t clear whether Rubio will appear with him at those events, the appearance at Port Arthur is close enough to a partisan act to violate the norm of non-partisanship since it is clearly meant to highlight one of the Trump Administration’s key accomplishments to the Texas electorate: bringing billions of dollars of Venezuelan oil to the U.S.
This move comes on the heels of Venezuela’s opposition leader, Nobel laureate Maria Corinna Machado’s triumphant return to her country on Sunday, where she was greeted by large crowds of well-wishers. One person who clearly wished her less well was the Secretary of State/National Security Advisor who issued a not-so-veiled warning against interfering with what one well-informed journalist described as “the country’s fragile democratic transition pushed by the Trump Administration.”
“You are not going to street protest your way into democracy” Rubio scolded. He and other Administration officials are extremely protective of what they regard as the most successful achievement of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy—removing Maduro from the Presidency of Venezuela and replacing him with the more pliant Delcy Rodriquez. They worry that Machado’s criticism of the failure to schedule elections as well as the oil deal that the Administration signed with Rodriguez could upset the applecart.