U.S. Senate votes unanimously to confirm warmonger Rubio

On the same day that Donald Trump was inaugurated as a wannabe dictator, every U.S. senator voted to confirm Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. There wasn’t a single no vote.

Rubio is a super war hawk who is determined to overthrow the governments of Cuba and Venezuela. He’s such a vicious enemy of the People’s Republic of China that the Chinese government has barred him from entering the country.

Yet Bernie Sanders voted to confirm Rubio. So did every Democrat in the Senate. It shows how phony and useless the Democratic Party’s leadership will be to oppose Trump’s program of war, racism, and cutbacks.

Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China was “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever faced.” He claimed that “in less than 10 years virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not — everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch.” 

“Holy hypertension,” Robin might have said to Batman about this war propaganda. Iran will continue to be a target as will Yemen.

Marco Rubio was sworn into office by race-baiting Vice-President JD Vance, who claimed that Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs. Within hours Rubio met with the ambassadors of India, Japan, and Australia — who, along with the United States, formed the so-called Quad — to plot new aggressive moves against the People’s Republic of China.

Trump’s choice as Secretary of State also threatened Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Rubio told senators that he was down with Trump using military force against Mexico.

Rubio claimed that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela “is governed by a narco-trafficking organization.” That’s the same lie that the first President Bush used to invade Panama in 1989, killing thousands of Panamanians.

As a political representative of the counterrevolutionaries in Miami, Marco Rubio has a special hatred for socialist Cuba. While Trump & Co. are planning World War 3 against China, the first attacks by the Pentagon may be in Latin America.

What we must do

The resistance that will stop Trump’s terrorist regime has to be built in our neighborhoods, unions, and movements. We have to protect our fellow workers who are immigrants from being seized by La Migra. Transgender people, particularly youth, must not be victimized.

The labor movement — marching alongside all those oppressed and threatened — needs to call a new Solidarity Day. It’s only poor and working people that can stop Trump and fascism.

Never forget that 22 Democrats in the House of Representatives in 2023 joined with Republicans to censure Rashida Tlaib — the only Palestinian-American in Congress — for attacking the genocide in Gaza. The next year, she stood alone to oppose Netanyahu when the bloody war criminal addressed Congress.

Millions of dollars were spent to defeat Cori Bush, Tlaib’s fellow fighter in Congress. Any elected official who wants to do the right thing will face retribution. 

It was the Democratic caucus that removed Harlem congressperson Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, as chair of the House Education and Labor Committee. Powell fought to raise the minimum wage, whose real value has dropped 32% since it was last raised in 2009.

The working class — which includes all the unemployed and those locked up in prison — also needs its own political party. A party that’s socialist, fights all forms of bigotry, and whose elected members won’t vote for a warmonger like Marco Rubio.

Into the streets to stop Trump!