Ashley Elizabeth Miller

Marco Rubio is a rising star on the Trump team. Only in his second week as secretary of state, the 52-year-old successor to Antony Blinken was busy in Central America securing two wins for Trump (and the cameras), plus cleaning up Elon Musk’s mess from abroad. All I have to say is: he better not get too good at his job — Trump might just get jealous and fire him!

On his first stop in Central America last week, Rubio announced Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, agreed to cut ties with China — by exiting the Belt Road Initiative, China’s signature infrastructure-building program.

Trump has claimed entry to the Panama Canal, which the U.S. built and controlled until 1999, has been taken over by China. (There is a seed of truth to this — China’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, owns CK Hutchison Holdings, which manages two of the canal’s five ports.)

Next on Rubio’s agenda: USAID. As a cascade of chaos erupted in Washington over Elon Musk gutting USAID, or as he calls it, “a ball of worms” — Rubio came to the rescue from San Salvador. There, he quelled concerns from Democrats, announcing he will head the agency and does not plan to eliminate it (entirely).

Rubio left El Salvador with a commitment from the country’s tough-on-crime president, Nayib Bukele, to house “dangerous American criminals” in his notorious mass incarceration system. He says all U.S. deportees, no matter their nationality, are welcome in El Salvador. Rubio called it “the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.”

This news, on top of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s concession (no matter how true) to send 10,000 more National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border in response to Trump’s retaliatory tariff threats, shows the MAGA base: Trump’s team knows how to get things done!

And chaos makes good TV. Trump is on a crusade to tackle optics gains early, but as we know, this is a distraction. He is using inflammatory news as a mode of evading his campaign promises — for instance, to lower costs for consumers. 

More on that: Trump has said Jerome Powell should cut interest rates to make prices more affordable for consumers. Putting aside how the reality of that is more complex, Trump was infuriated in January after The Fed said it would keep interest rates steady (at 4.25% to 4.5%)—blaming the decision on none other than: DEI.

“If the Fed had spent less time on [diversity, equity and inclusion], gender ideology, ‘green’ energy, and fake climate change, inflation would never have been a problem,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

U.S. billionaires should be smiling right about now. While Trump and his team stage foreign policy spectacles, House Republicans are quietly working to extend his tax cuts. House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to have the Budget Committee vote on a plan next week, according to the WSJ.

As all the headlines push average Joes farther from the news, reporters are stuck in their jobs — and must work harder than ever to uncover the truth. It reminds me of wise words from Edgar Allan Poe: “Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see.”