Marco Rubio's swift rise to a central spot in Trump's orbit

Marco Rubio was just two weeks into his new job when he got a critical lesson in being President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.

Marco Rubio was just two weeks into his new job when he got a critical lesson in being President Donald Trump’s secretary of state. In Latin America on his first trip outside the United States since he became America’s top diplomat, three senior administration officials said, Rubio was caught off guard by two policy decisions made in Washington: drastic changes to foreign aid and Trump’s publicly backing turning the Gaza Strip into a Middle East Riviera.

Rubio was similarly blindsided by foreign policy pronouncements from top administration officials two more times over the next 10 days.

Since then, he has figured out a strategy to minimize such frustrations. First, he has adapted some of his foreign policy positions that, in the past, diverged from Trump’s. Second, he has been on a MAGA charm offensive, recently dining at a Capitol Hill restaurant popular with Trump loyalists and appearing at an event hosted by a powerful pro-Trump activist organization. And he spends as much time as he can at the White House to be close to Trump, according to four senior administration officials.

“Look, it’s a water cooler,” one of the senior administration officials said of the West Wing. “In any job, you want to be at the water cooler.”

Now, Rubio’s position in the Trump administration has significantly expanded, and it is likely to draw him closer to Trump, who announced Thursday that he also will take on the role of national security adviser. Trump said he would nominate his first national security adviser, Mike Waltz, to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.