Marco Rubio watched along Sunday as a news anchor played him back his own remarks opposing the idea of striking a “deal” with Vladimir Putin.
The moment occurred after the secretary of state returned to Washington this weekend from Alaska, where he had been part of the delegation to accompany President Donald Trump to a historic summit with the Russian leader.
Trump met with Putin for nearly three hours Friday at a U.S. military base in Anchorage. In their first meeting in six years, the two leaders discussed the war in Ukraine. The U.S. president pushed for peace in the region but no ceasefire deal came out of the talks. However on Sunday, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff revealed that Putin had agreed to allow the U.S. and its European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee.
On Sunday, NBC’s Kristen Welker confronted Rubio with video when he was a senator, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In it, he proclaims that western leaders were repeatedly bamboozled by Putin due to the mistaken belief that it was possible the Russian leader would ever keep his word, and had a desire to broker peace agreements and avoid conflict.
“This guy lies. Habitually lies. He’s never kept a deal he ever signed, and he lies all the time. And I don’t know why–but he plays us like a violin in the west, because we want to cut a deal with everybody,” Senator Rubio said in the clip from three years ago. “You can’t cut a deal with a guy like this. He’s a professional, experienced liar.”
Welker then asked Rubio: “Mr. Secretary, given that, what makes you think that if you are able to reach a deal with President Putin, that he would stick to it. Based on what you said, he is a liar.”
Rubio replied that Putin’s dishonesty was what made a U.S.-backed security agreement for Ukraine so important. Putin’s openness to Ukraine inking a Nato-like security guarantee with American or European forces as part of a broader peace agreement, was described as a “game-changer”by Witkoff.
“That’s the point. That’s why the deal has to have enforceable mechanisms in it,” Rubio said. “That’s why the deal has to have things like security guarantees.”
Trump, however, has not committed publicly to honoring any kind of U.S.-backed security agreement for Ukraine, and often contradicts his own advisers.
Trump is set to meet Monday with Zelensky, several European leaders and NATO’s secretary-general.
In Alaska, Trump and Putin also reportedly agreed that the U.S. would consider backing a Russian proposal that the cession of the Donbas region, including parts occupied by Ukraine, would be part of an agreement for the war to end.
Rubio’s explanation on Putin is just the latest sign of how the former senator has been put in awkward positions by his new Cabinet role. While in Congress, Senator Rubio was one of the strongest bipartisan voices to address broad reform of the U.S. immigration system, though it ultimately failed.
He was also an outspoken opponent of tariffs and after January 6, Rubio was one of many Republicans who denounced Trump, and his supporters who attacked the Capitol. At the time he argued that the attack would damage America’s image on the world stage, something he was separately confronted about on ABC News in January. His boss would go on to pardon hundreds of people involved in the attack, including some convicted of assaulting police.
