Quote · The Bulwark Podcast
Maggie Haberman: A Gross and Messy White House
Where this was said
Marco Rubio and the CECOT Deal
At 18:15 · chapter starts 14:30
Tim Miller zeroes in on what he considers one of the most underreported revelations in the book: Rubio sitting with Bukele in his palace and personally hashing out the CECOT arrangement. The original pitch was a 'safe third' style agreement, but Bukele offered up CECOT as a destination for deportees — supposedly the most dangerous gang members, each rigorously vetted. The vetting, as events proved, was fiction: innocent people were sent, including Venezuelans with explicit no-deportation orders to El Salvador. One such case became a weeks-long political controversy for the administration. Haberman argues the Rubio-Bukele scene is emblematic of what this administration actually looks like — and that the desire to cast Rubio as a grown-up or a John Kelly figure is simply not supported by anything in the reporting.
Rubio personally negotiated with El Salvador's Bukele in his palace to create the CECOT deportation arrangement, which ultimately sent innocent people to the foreign prison.
Stop looking for a John Kelly or Jim Mattis in this White House. Rubio is constantly in the West Wing, in and out of the press secretary's office, and by Haberman's eyewitness account, loving every minute of it. He's dual-hatted as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor specifically because he wants to be near Trump — not to restrain him.
