Democratic Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said on Sunday that they regretted voting for Marco Rubio as the secretary of state.
The Senate approved Rubio 99-0 to be secretary of state.
Last week, after a tense meeting between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump canceled the Ukraine minerals deal.
Rubio said Zelensky needed to apologize after the meeting.
“There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic,” he told Kaitlan Collins, The Source host.
“Don’t come here and create a scenario where you are going to start lecturing us about how diplomacy isn’t going to work. Zelensky took it in that direction, and it ended in a predictable outcome.”
Rubio called the meeting “unfortunate” and said it “wasn’t supposed to be this way.” He added that this meeting sent Ukraine’s chances of peace backward.
As a result of Rubio taking Trump’s side in the meeting, Murphy said on CNN’s State of the Union with Dana Bash that voting for Rubio was a mistake.
“I think a lot of us thought that Marco Rubio was going to stand up to Donald Trump on issues like this,” the senator said.
“I thought when Donald Trump would come to [Rubio] and say help me move America closer to Russia and Russian values, Marco Rubio would stand up to him. Marco Rubio has not, and that has been a great disappointment to many of his former colleagues in the Senate.”
On Fox News Sunday, Van Hollen told host Shannon Bream that he regrets his vote for Rubio.
“As a member of the Senate, Secretary Rubio was somebody who stood up for American values [and] American principles. He acknowledged that Russia was the aggressor against Ukraine. He realized it wasn’t Zelensky who was the dictator,” the senator said.”
“And now, he simply taking his directions at the State Department from Elon Musk and essentially parroting the president’s position,” he added.
– – –
Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at zschmidt1717@gmail.com. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2.
Photo “Chris Murphy” by Chris Murphy.
