Michael Weiss

Response, Rubio is a closet Reaganite.

But he's doing what he has to do to stay in the game and to try and influence the system from within.

Now, this is a very dangerous wager, right?

Because at some point, you don't become sort of the quiet dissident voice of opposition inside the system.

You become an accomplice to the system.

You become a functionary of the worst MAGA instincts.

And we're seeing that now.

I mean, it was for me, Budapest was worse than Munich.

Munich, I could at least see some attempt to walk a knife edge between the traditional internationalist Republican line, the neocon line of the old Marco Rubio of the Senate and a sort of MAGA.

nativist, chauvinistic, civilizationalist concept of the world.

It's nothing to do with values and virtues and democracy and the rule of law and peaceful transitions of power.

It's to do with what hemisphere you grew up in and indeed what ethnicity or race you might come from.

And he doesn't believe that shit.

He's singing from that hymn sheet for a reason.

And it may backfire on him, right?

He may not be the heir apparent in 2028.

He may not be able to revert

to his former self.

This is my understanding of where things are.

Now, is it better that Rubio is in the game than not?