The United States’ top diplomat wasn’t pulling any punches.
In a social media post published Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio lashed out at the liberal news network CNN over a report that Rubio is being “overshadowed” in his role by a close friend of President Donald Trump — real estate billionaire Steve Witkoff.
And Rubio’s post on the social media platform X wasn’t diplomatic at all.
.@CNN is an anti-Trump gossip tabloid that uses thinly sourced stories to generate clicks and try to make trouble. Witkoff is one of the people I work with the CLOSEST on our team. These people are pathetic. https://t.co/y8xyJgWLLo
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 21, 2025
“@CNN is an anti-Trump gossip tabloid that uses thinly sourced stories to generate clicks and try to make trouble,” Rubio wrote. “Witkoff is one of the people I work with the CLOSEST on our team. These people are pathetic.”
Rubio was responding to a CNN “report” published Friday under the headline “‘It’s not what he expected’: Rubio has competition for the role of America’s top diplomat.”
The gist of it was that Rubio, a former Florida senator who challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, is being shortchanged in the secretary of state job — sidelined by Witkoff, who has acted as Trump’s special envoy in the Middle East and elsewhere, and blindsided by Trump’s periodic social media outbursts.
It’s a story long on allegations and short on identified sources — the only names in the article are of officials disputing its premise.
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“Nothing could be further from the truth,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told CNN in a statement.
“Secretary Rubio is a pivotal leader on President Trump’s national security team having spearheaded a number of foreign policy initiatives, especially as it relates to negotiating a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine and driving policy in the Western Hemisphere. President Trump has amassed a talented team who are working around the clock to deliver results for Americans.”
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce was blunter:
“Your premise is false. Secretary Rubio and Special Envoy Witkoff have a fantastic relationship, and are working together to advance President Trump’s agenda,” she said in a statement, according to CNN.
Those statements are buried deep, though. They didn’t suit the CNN agenda, which was clearly to make Rubio look as bad as possible while at the same time conveying the idea that the Trump administration’s true diplomacy was being carried out by his cronies.
To its dubious credit, the article included an update to add the text of Rubio’s social media post, but that came across as almost bravado — an attempt to cover up the embarrassment of the report itself.
The biased approach is of a piece with the March 7 report in The New York Times claiming a major row had broken out between Rubio and Trump adviser Elon Musk during a cabinet meeting.
The Trump White House blasted that, too.
Most Americans probably remember that liberal news outlets like CNN and The New York Times weren’t exactly known for hard-hitting exposes about frictions in the administration of former President Joe Biden.
In fact, both organizations spent the four disastrous years of the Biden presidency propping up the White House against all-too-true stories about the then-president’s all-too-obvious mental decline.
Most Americans might also remember that the Times and CNN were among the leaders of the liberal mediapack that spent the first Trump administration smearing the White House with the Democrat-inspired “Russia collusion” hoax and any other attack that was handy.
Former Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti — now serving a federal prison sentence for fraud — was on CNN blasting Trump so much he should have had his own parking spot.
And Rubio is going public with the truth of the matter: CNN “is an anti-Trump gossip tabloid that uses thinly sourced stories to generate clicks and try to make trouble.”
No one familiar with CNN’s body of work since Trump arrived on the political scene could dispute that.
No one who read Friday’s “thinly sourced” (in the extreme) article smearing Trump’s secretary of state would even try.
Rubio might not have been diplomatic, but he hit the nail on the head.
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