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BY KIM SHINKOSKEY

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has given every indication he will be every bit the propaganda hound for Donald Trump that Antony Blinken was for Joe Biden throughout Biden’s greenlighting of Netanyahu’s disproportionate slaughter in Gaza. For instance, on Face the Nation recently (Feb. 16, 2025), Rubio said, “Donald Trump is the only leader in the world who can start the Ukrainian peace process.”

Wow, he is really one of a kind, isn’t he? Nobody in Europe, nobody in Ukraine, nobody in Russia could possibly get peace started. Nobody has any power of persuasion except our MAGA guy.

Rubio also said, “We stand ready to follow the president’s lead on this.” Oh, wow, not Congress’ lead or the Constitution’s lead, or the lead of the majority of Americans? None of that?

Rubio mentioned JD Vance, who made quite a name for himself in Munich with his own propaganda flame-throwing there. Vance told the nations of Europe that it is okay for America to talk privately with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Rubio said, “I don’t know why anyone would be upset” about this.

Why would anyone worry about America giving credence to proto-fascism in Germany, when many prominent Americans didn’t worry about chumming around with the Nazi Party in the 1930s? That worked out just fine for the world, didn’t it?

In fact, MAGA and AfD buddying it up is merely an exercise of freedom of speech for both parties, say Vance and Rubio. Not exercising this kind of free speech, Vance says, worries him more than Russia or China, because denying our sacred freedom of speech is a problem that manifests “within” rather than without.

In fact, he could have gone further and said no one should be upset with Trump getting in bed with the far-left communist dictator Vlad Putin either. No danger in that, is there?

Seems like what is being said is that MAGA should be allowed to swing hard in favor of supporting authoritarian governments on the right or on the left, as long as such flirtations help keep America’s favorite son in power for a long time.

We also learned on the show from Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, that MAGA is supremely confident that Trump’s plans for taxing foreign nations with tariffs will not cause any problems here at home because the new administration will enact tax and spending cuts to offset all that new inflation.

But what if the inflation comes right now in spades, and all the tax and spending cuts come sometime in the future—if they ever come at all? How about that, Mr. President?

Rep. Don Crenshaw (R-Texas) assured Margaret Brennan and the American people that “No one is going to take advantage of Donald Trump” in all his freewheeling statements about Ukraine, the Middle East, and our boiling cauldron of domestic issues.

Certainly, Trump takes good care of his personal wealth and political power quite well, thank you. He is almost always the one doing the exploiting and is quite careful not to allow others to exploit him. After all, he took care to buy off Stormy Daniels’ testimony about their affair so it wouldn’t interfere with his presidential ambitions. That was smart planning, to be sure.

But what if our No. 47 betrays Ukraine or the Middle East or American public opinion by pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes in foreign affairs like he did in his domestic affair with Stormy Daniels?

Historically, authoritarians cut deals among themselves, promising not to interfere in each other’s natural habitat. Wouldn’t that be the pits for the average American if our new leader kept everybody in the dark about that kind of stuff?

Trump weighed in on his first month in office recently with the statement, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” That is darn close to Richard Nixon’s declaration, “If the president does it, it is not illegal.”

Nixon paved the way for Chief Justice John Roberts to make that anti-democracy theory of government our new reality in America when he declared the president has immunity from prosecution. Now Trump is trumpeting this radical new theory as settled law.

However, if Trump, and only Trump, decides who and what is worth saving in America, doesn’t that mean Trump, and only Trump, decides what laws can be broken and how everybody else is going to be treated?

(Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of The American Kings: Growth in Presidential Power from George Washington to Barack Obama (2014).)