Marco Rubio holds two chairs at once. He is Secretary of State. He is National Security Advisor. On September 22, the White House confirmed that President Trump had signed the commission making the second appointment permanent. Rubio had carried it on an interim basis since May 1, 2025, when Mike Waltz was nominated to serve at the United Nations. The only man who held both at the same time, before this, was Henry Kissinger, from 1973 to 1975.
The other cut is the money. On July 1, 2025, USAID stopped administering foreign aid. Between January of that year and March 2026, the agency terminated 6,780 of its 7,510 awards. Those figures are the State Department’s, collected in a GAO report dated September 30. This is not one year’s spending. These were existing awards that were terminated. The staff went from about 13,600 to 241.
Call it aid if you want. A great deal of it paid for workshops, media, and organizations with a Washington signature, and those workshops had a habit of landing on one side of a campaign. Don Jr. put it on October 7, and the President reposted him. They called it aid, but it was election interference. Bukele said it in one line. No opposition without that money. People who lived under communism do not need a seminar to hear what that means. Rubio’s family did not.
Look at the map from that cutoff, not from before it.
Since USAID was dismantled, the right in Latin America keeps winning, and the left keeps losing. Not one country on the chart is marked for the left. The swing, measured against each country’s previous presidential election, runs Bolivia 49.8, Costa Rica 35.6, Honduras 35.2, Chile 28.1, Ecuador 7.6, Colombia 4.0, Peru 0.5. Average, 23 points to the right. The labels on the map are margins, and they are smaller. Honduras on the map is +21.1. Same chart, different measure. Brazil is grey. Result pending. The source line is national electoral authorities, by way of Wikipedia and press reports. Trump put the graphic up on Truth Social the morning of October 7. It was already all over X.
The faces are the same story, told without a legend.
Trump. Milei. Bukele. Kast. De la Espriella. Flávio Bolsonaro. Rodrigo Paz. Keiko Fujimori. Peña. Noboa. A fan account in Argentina posted the board on October 7 with one line. The West is safe. Rod Martin reposted it. The world is healing. A vote that was not prepaid.
Rubio is not guessing at Cuba from a briefing book. He was born in Miami. He is the son of Cubans. His parents came in 1956. In 1961 his mother went back with the older children, meaning to stay. Within weeks it was plain what communism was, and they left for good. On May 20, Cuban independence day, he spoke to the people still on the island, in Spanish, on video. The embassy posted the transcript. No translator required.
He did not blame a blockade for the blackouts. He said the people who control the country have looted billions, and none of it has reached the people. He said Cuba is not run by a revolution. It is run by GAESA, a state inside the state. He offered a new road, with the Cuban people, not with that company. One hundred million dollars in food and medicine, if the Catholic Church or another trusted charity hands it out, and not the regime’s store. Then the sentence a station can read as written. A new Cuba where ordinary people, and not only the Communist Party, can own a television station or a newspaper. A new Cuba where a man can complain about a system that fails without going to jail or being forced off his island.
That is freedom of expression. It is not an American hobby. It already exists in the Bahamas, in the Dominican Republic, in Jamaica, and ninety miles away in Florida. If it is possible around Cuba, why not inside it.
On July 16, to representatives of 65 countries, he said the other half in one line. We preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best, and hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average.
The cutoff did not build a republic. It took a hand off the scale. The rest belongs to people who are done living quiet.
May 20, in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFFS7os5CCs
Notes: Flávio Bolsonaro led the first round, 47 to 45. Runoff October 25. Santiago Peña took office in Paraguay in 2023. The GAESA figures are Rubio’s. Electoral swing and victory margin are different measures.