One of President Donald Trump’s less controversial foreign policy figures, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is considering resigning after Republicans suffered historic losses in the 2026 midterm elections.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio is weighing whether to leave the Trump administration, people familiar with the matter said, as he considers his next moves following Republicans’ midterm elections wipeout this week,” Bloomberg’s Alan Wickham posted on X on Tuesday. “Rubio and his advisers are going over options for his future, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. He hasn’t made a decision about whether to quit his posts as top US diplomat and national security adviser, and there is no timetable on a possible departure.”
Wickham added, “Rubio has spoken to officials at the White House about stepping down, and has been asked to stay, some of the people said. The State Department denied he was thinking about resigning.”
While Rubio is linked to the Iran War, which Trump himself admitted played a large role in Republicans’ 2026 defeats, he is less blamed in general than Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has earned a lot of enemies as he carries out purges in the military. Hegseth has reportedly offered to step down, but Trump is reluctant to let go of Hegseth because he personally holds the Defense Secretary in high regard. Then again, he also is reportedly fond of Rubio as well, but may be willing to let Rubio go if the State Secretary proves more amenable to departing than the Pentagon leader.
One thing is certain: Trump is not going to blame himself for Republicans’ poor performance on Tuesday.
“Behind the scenes, we’ve seen an enormous amount of finger-pointing and blame-shifting,” CNN’s Kristen Holmes told network anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday. “In terms of the president himself, he has continued to say, and that includes behind closed doors, that he believes the reason Republicans lost was not a rebuke of him, but because, in fact, he was not actually on the ballot.”
Speaking with AlterNet earlier this week, polling expert and Managing Editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball Kyle Kondik explained that the recent midterms were “one of the biggest waves in American history. The Watergate wave of [the 1974 midterms] might be the only comparable election in modern history. This was kind of like [the 2006 midterms], but clearly bigger.”
Although Trump threatened to overturn the results in court or by force if they went against him, Kondik also told AlterNet that “this was such a thumping that even he couldn’t deny it with a straight face.”