Marco Rubio Fumbles When Asked About Trump’s “Day One” Promise

Faced on Tuesday with President Donald Trump’s broken campaign promises on the Russia-Ukraine war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio trotted out a convenient excuse.

When Today host Craig Melvin reminded Rubio of Trump’s long-broken vow to end the conflict within 24 hours, the secretary of state (falsely) claimed that the president had not been speaking literally on the campaign trail.

“The president repeatedly though did say that he would end the war in Ukraine on day one, and we are some 250 days into the administration,” noted Melvin.

“Yeah, but that’s not up to us to end the war,” Rubio cut in. “The Russians have to stop the war, and the Ukrainians have to agree to a peace deal. What the president expressed is that it would be a priority of his.”

In reality, Trump harped incessantly on the 2024 campaign trail about how he would achieve peace in Ukraine in 24 hours. This was not a figurative way to describe the war as a priority; he repeated a version of the statement over 50 times, often making a point to note that he was serious, and that it would be relatively easy to accomplish.

“I’ll have it done in 24 hours. I say that, and I would do that. That’s easy compared to some of the things,” he said in June 2023. A few days later, he said that “it won’t even be a tough one by comparison to other things.”

The following month, he emphasized his seriousness, despite naysayers. “I’ll get that done within 24 hours. Everyone says, ‘Oh, no, you can’t.’ Absolutely I can. Absolutely I can,” he said at one event, adding at another that “it’ll be done within 24 hours, you watch. They all say, ‘That’s such a boast.’ It will be done very quickly.”

During an August 2024 podcast appearance, Trump said, “I will have that war settled when I’m president-elect, meaning before I get to office on January 20.” When another podcaster in October expressed amazement at his vow to end the war before taking office, Trump said he would fulfill it because “you need that credibility.”

As his inauguration drew near, Trump walked back his statement in his December 2024 Time Person of the Year story, acknowledging ending the conflict wasn’t as easy as he made it out to be. About three months into his presidency, he told Time, “Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point.”

Rubio seems to be taking that same convenient, but untrue, tack now.

Last week, the president came the closest he’s capable of getting to an admission of failure, saying that he’d thought Russia-Ukraine “would be easiest” to solve, but Russian President Vladimir Putin “really let me down.”

President Donald Trump dedicated a portion of his Tuesday address before the United Nations General Assembly to settle a decades-old score from his days as a real estate developer. In a lengthy digression, he complained that he didn’t get the job to renovate and rebuild U.N. headquarters.

Trump in 2001 offered to renovate the complex for $400 million—“more quickly, much better, and much less expensively” than existing offers, he claimed. He was ultimately turned down, and the refurbishment was completed for $2.3 billion, per the Associated Press. Apparently, he’s never forgotten it—even as a president on the world stage.

“Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex,” Trump told the roomful of world leaders on Tuesday. “I remember it so well. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, ‘I’m going to give you marble floors; they’re going to give you terrazzo. I’m going to give you the best of everything. You’re going to have mahogany walls; they’re going to give you plastic.’

“But they decided to go in another direction,” Trump lamented, “which was much more expensive at the time, and which actually produced a far inferior product. And I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction, and that their building concepts were so wrong and the product they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly. It was going to cost them a fortune. And I said, ‘And wait till you see the overruns.’

“Well, I turned out to be right,” the president said. “They had massive cost overruns and spent between $2 and $4 billion on the building, and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them.

“You walk on terrazzo, do you notice that?”

President Donald Trump just taught everyone how important teleprompters are.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Trump immediately assured the audience he would be just fine delivering remarks off the cuff, “because the teleprompter is not working.”

“I feel very happy to be up here nevertheless, and that way you speak more from the heart. I can only say that whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble,” the U.S. president joked.

Trump then embarked on one of his most nonsensical addresses to date, ranting against Europe for embracing the “double-tailed monster” of immigration and green energy. But his criticisms were little more than anti-science claims and racist drivel attacking immigrants.

“I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” Trump ranted.

Trump complained about London Mayor Sadiq Khan, falsely claiming that the city’s first Muslim leader hoped to install Islamic code. “I look at London where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it has been so changed. So changed,” Trump said. “Now they want to go to sharia law, but you’re in a different country, you can’t do that.”

Trump’s remarks about Europe welcoming immigrants were so explicitly racist that they quickly bypassed dog-whistle politics and went straight to barking commands not to dilute European culture. “You’re doing it because you want to be politically correct, and you’re destroying your heritage,” he warned.

He then turned his attention to green energy, appearing to laud Germany for scrapping subsidies for renewable energy projects. “They were going all green. All green is all bankrupt. That’s what it represents,” Trump said. “And it’s not politically correct, I’ll be very badly criticized for saying it, but I’m here to tell the truth. I don’t care, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Trump slammed countries for embracing green energy in an attempt to reduce their carbon footprints, calling climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.”

The president criticized past speakers at the United Nations for predicting that global warming would result in catastrophic climate disasters. Those predictions were “made by stupid people who have cost their countries fortunes and given their countries no chance for success,” Trump said.

Trump even used his diatribe against green energy to plug his own merchandise. “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things, you know?” he said. “They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat: the best-selling hat, ‘Trump was right about everything.’ And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything.”

The supposed leader of the free world has offered a new rallying cry for the United Nations: “Your countries are going to hell.”

Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday, Trump instructed representatives from the 193 member states that they all needed to stop allowing immigration into their respective nations.

“It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders,” Trump said from the lectern. “You have to end it now. See, I can tell you. I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.”

He continued that the United States had taken “bold” actions of its own to crack down on “uncontrolled migration.”

“Once we started detaining and deporting everyone who crossed the border and removing illegal aliens from the United States, they simply stopped coming,” he said. “They’re not coming anymore.”

Beyond Trump’s rose-colored glasses, the administration’s approach to handling immigration has not been glamorous. Rather, it has strayed into murky legal waters. Over the last nine months, federal immigration officials have been tasked by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day. The administration has also hastily constructed concentration camps in order to accommodate the startling number of detainees.

But actually doing so has forced the agency to seek out immigrants that the administration did not originally advertise targeting, such as noncriminals and even lawful temporary residents possessing visas or green cards.

As a result, interest in U.S. tourism has plummeted: On Monday, The Irish Times reported that the price of a one-way ticket from Dublin to New York City had dropped to just 50 cents (before taxes and fees).

The radical and xenophobic policies have also made it far less attractive for people to work in the U.S. On Friday, Trump announced that the popular H-1B work visa would come with a new $100,000 price tag, practically eradicating corporate interest in sponsoring international talent while sending immigrants and the U.S. companies they work for into a panic.

Trump, who was jeered and mocked by his U.N. colleagues during his first term, has taken decisive action to peel the U.S. and its influence away from the international caucus. So far this year, the Trump administration has refused to make any payments to the U.N., throwing the assembly into an unprecedented cash crunch. (The United States has historically been the single largest funder of the global alliance.)

The president also withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council, cut funding for foreign humanitarian aid, and ended U.S. participation in Unesco on the basis that the world heritage organization “supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes.” The White House also pulled out of the World Health Organization—another U.N. entity—over disagreements on how the global organization handled the pandemic.

Left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, used his Tuesday speech at the United Nations to openly rebuke Trump’s retaliatory pro-Bolsonaro tariffs, his brazen attack on the sovereignty of Brazil and other South American states, and his entire strongman authoritarian ideology—all without saying his name.

Lula’s speech was right before Trump’s, and it’s very likely that Trump heard every word.

“Attacks on sovereignty, arbitrary sanctions, and unilateral interventions are becoming the rule. There is a clear parallel between the multilateralism crisis and the weakening of democracy,” Lula said. “Authoritarianism is strengthened when we fail to act in the face of arbitrary acts; when the international society falters in defending peace, sovereignty, and the rule of law. The consequences are tragic.”

Lula then turned to Trump’s support for Javier Bolsonaro, who Trump viewed as an understudy of sorts. Earlier this month, Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced the far-right leader to 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup resembling January 6, sending his supporters to raid Brazil’s presidential palace, the Supreme Court, and Congress after his election loss to Lula. Trump has heavily tariffed Brazil and sanctioned top officials over the “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.

“There is no justification for unilateral and arbitrary measures against our institutions and our economy. The aggression against the independence of the judiciary branch of power is unacceptable,” Lula continued. “Peace cannot be achieved with impunity. A few days ago … a former head of state was convicted of attacking the democratic rule of law. He was investigated, indicted, trialed, and held accountable for his actions in a meticulous process.… Brazil sent a message to all aspiring autocrats and those who support them: Our democracy, our sovereignty, are nonnegotiable.”

Lula went on to call for the end to inequality and food insecurity, equal rights and protections for women, a reduction in arms spending, and more taxes on the wealthiest, noting that “poverty is as much an enemy of democracy as extremism.”

He also criticized the Trump administration’s unilateral, extrajudicial bombing of boats in the Caribbean sea that it believes to be Venezuelan drug boats.

“The comparison between crime and terrorism is worrying. The most effective way to combat drug trafficking is to cooperate to suppress money laundering and limit arms trade,” Lula said. “Using lethal force in situations that do not constitute armed conflict is tantamount to executing people without trial.… The path to dialogue must not be closed in Venezuela.”

He also stated that while Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel was “indefensible,” there was “nothing, absolutely nothing,” that justified the “ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Trump seemed to have taken little from Lula’s impassioned, principled speech, as he vamped, blamed the previous administration for everything, and essentially told everyone they were going to hell.