Michael Weiss

The U.S.

intelligence assessment of Russia is that Putin maintains maximalist ambitions.

He wants the entirety of the country, and he's basically using the peace process as a way to just kind of prolong this whole thing, to keep sanctions at bay, to keep Trump from doing something provocative or untoward that would do more damage to Russia.

It's a pantomime.

It's not serious diplomacy.

Rubio gets this.

The problem is he sold his soul to Donald Trump.

He gets up and he is such the courtier.

He so flatters Trump.

He's almost indistinguishable from Vance in the effusive praise.

He literally puts Donald Trump to sleep, right?

Why is he doing this?

Like, what is the grand design here?

And if I had to make a guess, and some of this is a little bit educated from reporting I've done, the guess is these are, in his mind, necessary compromises.

necessary compromises of his principles and his beliefs in order to get the things that he most wants done.

What does he most want done?

Marco Rubio, the son of two Cuban emigres, one a bartender, the other a housemaid, growing up in Miami, Florida, most wants the crowning achievement of his life in government would be toppling the Castro regime in Cuba.

And it looks very, very likely that that is going to happen while Donald Trump is still president, because Axios News reports that Rubio is in direct conversation with Raul Castro's grandson, probably about some kind of transition.

So Venezuela was first.

That was the first domino to fall.