WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as secretary of state and has asked Rep. Mike Waltz , a Green Beret veteran, to be his White House national security adviser, according to people familiar with his thinking.
Trump could change his mind on the Rubio move, as he remains fond of others lobbying for the secretary of state role. But people familiar with the Rubio decision said that Trump feels good about going with him; Trump had considered him for the vice president slot before settling on Ohio Sen. JD Vance .
Spokespeople for the Trump transition and Rubio didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The picks, made less than a full week since Election Day, illustrate how quickly the president-elect is moving to fill out key foreign policy positions. Also on Monday, he chose Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Rubio, a former Trump critic and rival for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, has grown close with Trump in the years since and campaigned with him in the closing weeks of the race against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris .
Rubio’s expected rise to the nation’s top diplomatic post, earlier reported by the New York Times , would put a more establishment figure into the highest echelons of the Trump administration. A hawk on China, Iran and Cuba, Rubio joined most of Washington in supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. But in recent months he started changing his message, advocating for the conflict to end as soon as possible, last week stating the U.S. was “funding a stalemate war” and that it would take “100 years” to rebuild Ukraine.
Trump’s pick comes just hours after he decided to name Waltz, a fellow tough-on-China lawmaker, as national security adviser. Earlier, Trump also chose another Floridian, co-campaign manager Susie Wiles , as his chief of staff.
Waltz will step into his cabinet-level role amid prolonged conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and Trump is expected to try to prevent further escalation abroad by building deterrence against foreign rivals while favoring transactional policies with U.S. allies.
Trump, in his first term in office, went through four national security advisers, the first of whom served only 22 days. The others, including Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and John Bolton , were eventually pushed out by Trump over their disagreements over certain policy issues. Robert O’Brien , Trump’s last national security adviser, served through the Covid-19 pandemic and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and was among the names Trump has considered for a cabinet job in his coming term.
Waltz, (R., Fla.), has been an outspoken Trump supporter in recent years, echoing the former president’s no-tolerance on illegal immigration and skepticism of America’s support for Ukraine.
Rep. Mike Waltz will step into his role amid prolonged conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Last year, Waltz penned an opinion piece for FoxNews.com in which he argued that “the era of Ukraine’s blank check from Congress is over.” He has echoed Trump in calling on Europe to do more to ensure the collective defense of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“Stopping Russia before it draws NATO and therefore the U.S. into war is the right thing to do,” Waltz wrote. “But the burden cannot continue to be solely on the shoulders of the American people, especially while Western Europe gets a pass.”
This month, he told NPR that Trump’s vow to negotiate between Ukraine and Russia is “perfectly reasonable” and said that if Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t cooperate, the U.S. has “leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well.”
Waltz is among the most hawkish members of Congress on China, serving on the House China Task Force that coordinates policy on how the U.S. should compete with China. He also has echoed Trump’s calls for accountability after the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Waltz, 50 years old, is the latest West Wing official to hail from Florida, the state Trump now calls home. He was born in Boynton Beach, Fla., and grew up in Jacksonville.
Waltz served 27 years in the U.S. Army and National Guard, retiring during his second term in Congress. After being commissioned as an Army lieutenant, Waltz graduated from Ranger School and was selected for the elite Green Berets, serving worldwide as a Special Forces officer with several combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. He was awarded four Bronze Stars, including two for Valor.
In government, he has served in various capacities at the White House and the Pentagon, including as a defense policy director for Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates .
In 2018, he was elected to serve as congressman for Florida’s sixth congressional district, replacing Ron DeSantis , who that year was elected the state’s governor. Waltz’s wife Julia Nesheiwat , a fellow combat veteran who served in several presidential administrations, was a homeland security adviser to Trump during his first administration.
The Rubio decision, if Trump goes through with it as expected, would open up a Senate seat in Florida, giving DeSantis a chance to appoint a successor. The seat would be up for election in 2026.
Once a swing state, Florida is now reliably red given Trump’s 13 percentage point margin of victory there last week. In the next Congress, Republicans are set to hold 53 seats compared with 47 for the Democrats.
The Waltz and Stefanik appointments would trigger special elections next year to fill their seats in the House, where the GOP appears on track to keep its narrow majority. Control of the House of Representatives remained uncalled. Republicans have a 214-205 advantage but need 218 for a majority.
Rubio’s relationship with Trump has come a long way since the “Little Marco” taunts of the 2016 campaign. The two bonded during Trump’s presidential term, when Rubio served as an informal adviser on Latin American policy and worked with Ivanka Trump , the president’s daughter, on expanding the Child Tax Credit.
Years ago Rubio criticized Trump’s calls for mass deportation; now he echoes the former president’s rhetoric. “This is an invasion of the country, and it needs to be dealt with dramatically,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in May.
Stephen Miller , the hard-charging architect of Trump’s border policies and a onetime Rubio detractor, has called the senator “one of the most deep, insightful and gifted thinkers on our political issues.” Trump picked Miller as deputy chief of staff in his second term.
Write to Vivian Salama at vivian.salama@wsj.com , Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com
