Max’s best-selling biography of Ronald Reagan, Reagan: His Life and Legend, will be released in paperback on October 20. It was selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2024. You can purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore. Also please subscribe to Max’s Substack newsletter, The Long View.

Rubio overhypes leftist threats to establish his MAGA credentials

The secretary of state picks enemies that, unlike Russia or Iran, probably won't push back.

By MAX BOOT

Washington Post

July 27, 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is either the luckiest or the shrewdest member of the Trump cabinet —maybe both. His good fortune has been that President Donald Trump has handed the most intractable diplomatic problems — ending the U.S.-Iran and Russia-Ukraine wars — to someone else: special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and, in the case of Iran, to Rubio’s presumed rival for the 2028 Republican nomination, Vice President JD Vance. Neither set of negotiations is showing much progress, but Rubio escapes the fallout.

The secretary of state is smart enough to pick on enemies that, unlike Russia or Iran, are less likely to effectively push back. In the past few weeks, Rubio has targeted the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Communist regime in Cuba and left-wing extremists in ways that are sure to please a president who is campaigning against the “communist menace” without running the risk of any serious blowback. That’s because the threats that Rubio claims to be fighting are vastly, ludicrously overblown.