Marco Rubio Grilled on Why He Ditched Iran Talks to Party With Trump

Secretary of State Marco Rubio can’t quite explain why he went to a UFC event in the middle of negotiations with Iran.

During Rubio’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen pointed out that Rubio was watching UFC 327 in Miami with President Trump instead of taking part in talks with Iran in Pakistan in April.

“I’d like to remind the American people that as the secretary of state, your main duty as America’s chief diplomat is to maintain our relations with foreign nations. This is why I was shocked to see that you were at a party with President Trump in Miami instead of accompanying Vice President Vance to Pakistan for negotiations,” Rosen said, to which Rubio quickly took offense.

“What party was I at? I was at a party?” Rubio responded.

“It’s publicly reported, and there’s photos there,” Rosen said. Rubio got upset and accused Rosen of slandering him.

Rosen pointed out that special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were present at the negotiations, along with Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, but Rubio was missing.

“I was not at a party. Where I was is next to the president, because in the midst of those negotiations, I was in communications with [Witkoff and Kushner], and in fact, I think there is media reporting from that evening on how, multiple occasions, I went into a back room, I came back out and spoke to the president and was constantly updating him,” Rubio said. “I know your staff wrote up this cute statement for your TikTok video, but it’s not true, and it’s not real, OK?

“I am the national security adviser and secretary of state. I was co-located with the president in the midst of a high-stakes negotiation so that I could immediately inform him about events occurring halfway around the world. I was where I needed to be at that moment because we had a very capable team on the ground in Pakistan led by the vice president,” Rubio added.

Rubio’s angry defense didn’t disprove Rosen’s main point: that President Trump dispatched Vance and two people who weren’t confirmed by Congress to critical negotiations with Iran instead of the chief U.S. diplomat. Since April, negotiations continued off and on until Monday, when Iran abruptly ended talks, citing Israel’s attacks on Lebanon as a ceasefire violation. Meanwhile, Trump and his top officials continue to be seen at events such as UFC fights, with plans to hold one at the White House on the president’s birthday next month.

At least four Republican senators are not feeling Bill Pulte, President Trump’s pick to replace Tulsi Gabbard as acting director of national intelligence.

“I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job,” GOP Senator John Cornyn, who recently lost his reelection campaign thanks to a Trump endorsement of his opponent, told PBS’s Lisa Desjardins.

“He doesn’t seem very qualified,” added Senator Bill Cassidy, who also lost his reelection campaign thanks to the president.

“I don’t know of any national security experience that he has,” said Senator Thom Tillis, who is retiring at the end of this term. “So I’ll be looking at that first and foremost.”

“Well, we don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune. “So, again, I’ve just heard about it. I’ll try and get more information about the current state of their thinking about that position. And again, if he’s somebody they want in that position permanently, he’s got, as you all know, a lengthy road ahead of him.”

Thune is right to be worried about a weaponized intelligence community in Pulte’s hands. With zero national security experience, Pulte has made a name for himself using his previous role at Fannie Mae to attack Trump’s political enemies. Now, with even Republicans voicing displeasure just hours after his announcement, any possibility of Pulte’s taking over the position permanently is firmly in jeopardy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a major meltdown Tuesday after he was called out for America’s disastrous dealmaking with Iran.

Speaking during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Senator Cory Booker pressed Rubio over allowing Iran to get rich off the flailing U.S. war effort despite attacking President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal for doing the same thing.

The New Jersey Democrat laid out how the U.S. had allowed Iran to sell an estimated $10 billion worth of sanctioned oil to China and then promised to further alleviate sanctions in return for releasing highly enriched uranium and committing to limiting its enrichment capacity.

“And that was the exact deal that you guys vilified, that the president and you vilified President Obama for having,” Booker said. Of course, Donald Trump’s deal is even worse than Booker says, as it reportedly includes a $300 billion investment fund for Tehran, in the event that a deal is reached.

“Here we have a worse situation, where our adversary and our enemy, who’s causing havoc in the region, who is funding proxies and terrorists, has discovered—thanks to you all—the power of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz,” Booker continued.

“No, they didn’t discover—they knew that a long time ago, and they’ve done it before,” Rubio said.

“Well, clearly, we all knew that a long time ago, that’s why this ill-conceived war should’ve never happened,” Booker said. “You have made our adversary in a stronger negotiating position. We are the strongest nation on earth, and we’re in a stalemate with Iran, and now we’re begging to get back into a deal that you all trashed in the first place.”

“No one’s begging for anything here,” Rubio said. “The Iranians might be begging because their economy is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a day.”

But Iran is not begging—in fact, it axed peace talks as of Monday.

The secretary continued to insist Iran’s economy was in free fall and its military capabilities were depleted. However, recent reporting indicates that Iran’s economy could survive for months more under the U.S. military’s blockade, and the country has retained significant ballistic missile capabilities, recovered underground facilities, repaired damaged missiles, and assembled new ones.

Booker continued: “Mr. Rubio, you keep telling us how we’re winning the war—”

“Well, the war’s over,” Rubio said.

“The war is not over!” Booker cried as his time expired. But he was right—as long as Iran retains control over the Strait of Hormuz, the war is still ongoing.

Even the Trump administration doesn’t trust Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to handle public health policy.

State Secretary Marco Rubio hung the health secretary out to dry Tuesday, revealing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he was planning to take the reins on vaccine development and distribution as the ebola virus spreads.

“As we know, one of the entities that is a critical global health tool is Gavi, particularly during a disease outbreak,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, referring to the independent, global, public-private vaccine alliance. “It plays a role in distributing ebola vaccines, and has committed up to $40 million to develop a vaccine for the current ebola strain that has no vaccine right now.

“So, how are you making sure that Secretary Kennedy—who has been sitting on those funds for months now—is going to release them so that they can go to help develop a vaccine to address the ebola outbreak?”

“The president had asked that we allow Secretary Kennedy to play a leading role on the Gavi decision because of his strongly held views regarding vaccine safety,” Rubio said. “The State Department is going to be reengaging—I’m not here to tell you we’re going to yank this thing and we’re not going to listen to his points of view—but the State Department, a few weeks ago, made the decision that we were going to reengage on this issue of Gavi.”

Gavi was founded in 2000 and has since provided roughly $29 billion to support vaccine development and immunization efforts for children in developing countries. It has historically counted the U.S. as one of its largest funders, alongside the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.K. government. The U.S. contributed about 13 percent of the organization’s total budget until June 2025, when Kennedy decided that foreign aid—and vaccine development—would no longer be one of HHS’s priorities.

At the time, Kennedy sent a video missive to global leaders that supported Gavi, claiming that the organization had “ignored the science” on vaccinating children.

“In its zeal to promote universal vaccination, it has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety,” Kennedy said. “I’ll tell you how to start taking vaccine safety seriously: Consider the best science available, even when the science contradicts established paradigms. Until that happens, the United States won’t contribute more to Gavi.” He did not offer evidence for his claims.

Kennedy is a leader in a growing movement of anti-vax parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that, at one point, falsely linked autism to the jab.

The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.

As a reminder: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have effectively eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat to the average, health-conscious individual.

Republican senators are still unconvinced that President Trump is dropping his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund—and want assurance that Trump won’t use taxpayer funds to pay off his allies. Without it, their own immigration reconciliation bill may also be in jeopardy. 

On Monday, the Department of Justice announced that it would hold back on its plans for the fund after a federal judge ordered them paused until June 12. While the administration promised to abide, Republican senators are unconvinced it’s a permanent end. 

“If it means it’s completely pulled, then that would satisfy me, but I haven’t heard anybody say that that is actually what is happening,” Senator Lisa Murkowski told Politico. Senator Shelley Moore Capito called for  “more investigation” into the fund, while Senator James Langford urged the Trump administration to “say what they actually mean” regarding the fund. 

“The reconciliation bill looks like a broken arm with the bones sticking out,” Senator John Kennedy added. “They have to abide by the district court decision—that’s in the Constitution. I’d have to know more about their position on the weaponization fund to know whether it would be enough to dislodge the reconciliation bill.”

The continued questions about the slush fund suggest that there is much more internal discord among the GOP Senate than initially thought—and less inherent rallying around President Trump. 

This all comes as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche prepares to testify before the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday, where he will most surely be asked about the future of the slush fund.