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What a difference it makes to have a president who takes an America First agenda in the Western Hemisphere seriously, and whose actions finally match his words. For decades, U.S. presidents talked about Latin America while allowing chaos, corruption, and hostile regimes to metastasize in our own backyard. That era is ending quickly under President Donald Trump.
The world just witnessed one of the cleanest and most decisive actions in support of this renewed doctrine: the removal of illegitimate Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, under a U.S. arrest warrant executed with the backing of the renamed U.S. Department of War. The message could not be clearer. America is no longer content to issue statements while criminal regimes entrench themselves, export misery, and threaten our national security.
This moment also puts into sharp relief President Trump’s genius in selecting Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. If personnel is policy, then Trump and Rubio together represent a profound strategic shift. Rubio is not just executing an America First agenda in the Americas with discipline and clarity. He is doing so with lived experience, moral conviction, and a deep understanding of what instability in this hemisphere actually produces.
Marco Rubio is a son of Miami-Dade County. Born to Cuban immigrants who came to America before Castro’s rise but whose family story was shaped by Cuba’s descent into tyranny, he was raised among families defined by communism’s wreckage, political imprisonment, and forced exile. He lived, worked, and governed here before stepping onto the national and global stage. That background matters. Rubio understands that a chaotic and unstable Latin America is fertile ground for socialist misery, entrenched poverty, humanitarian crises, and mass illegal migration. It fuels drug and human trafficking into the United States and finances criminal enterprises that do real harm to American communities.
Rubio also understands something Washington elites have long ignored: instability in our hemisphere is not accidental. It is actively cultivated by America’s adversaries. Russia, China, and Iran have spent years exploiting weak states, propping up dictators, laundering influence through proper and sham business ventures, and disguising geopolitical penetration as humanitarian relief. A weakened and distracted United States suits them just fine.
Growing up in Miami-Dade, Rubio did not just see the Castro regime as an abstract adversary. He saw its export model. He saw how authoritarian regimes support terror and the drug trade, meddle in neighboring countries, and sometimes pose a direct security threat to the United States itself. That understanding now informs American diplomacy in real time.
We are already seeing the consequences. Cuba, long sustained by external lifelines and ideological inertia, is facing mounting pressure and the real possibility of collapse. In Colombia, the narco-fueled leftist regime of Gustavo Petro is under visible strain as regional dynamics shift, and old assumptions fall apart. Antagonistic regimes in the Americas, whether independent actors or ideological puppets, are no longer merely on notice. They are confronting an evolution in hemispheric thinking that cannot be reversed.
What makes this moment extraordinary is its velocity. Activity breeds activity. Strength clarifies choices. As the Left’s grip weakens across the Americas, new conversations are beginning inside these countries among people who know, as Rubio knows, that the era of chaos and permanent instability is coming to an end.
Public service at this level carries real cost. It means time away from family, community, and the familiar rhythms of home. Yet history will show that Marco Rubio’s willingness to step forward at this moment mattered. His work is driven by what he learned in Miami-Dade, by his Cuban heritage, and by a Christian faith that understands the moral stakes of freedom versus tyranny.
Thank God that Marco Rubio was available and willing to serve as President Trump’s tip of the spear in the Americas at this pivotal moment in history. Watch closely. Things are moving fast, and the net positives for our hemisphere, and for the United States, are only beginning to emerge.
