Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Americans are heirs to Greek and Roman civilization and that only the West still apologizes for its achievements, a message he calls central to America First foreign policy.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down with Breitbart News on Thursday, October 15, 2026, for his first major exclusive long-form on-camera interview after a historic address at the Acropolis in Athens.
In the Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room at the State Department, Rubio told Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle that the speech’s core point runs through the Trump administration’s approach abroad: the United States inherited its system, culture, and values from a long Western tradition, and leaders should stop treating that inheritance as something to hide.
Breitbart reported that Rubio framed the address as a reminder, not an attack on other cultures, and tied it directly to how Washington now talks about power, energy, and alliances.
He refused to feed 2028 speculation. He pointed instead to the work in front of him, to Vice President JD Vance on the campaign trail, and to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s pressure on Iran.
Rubio described Americans as heirs of a civilization that runs through Greece, Rome, and Europe. He said the things the country believes are not empty phrases on paper. They rest on thousands of years of history.
He put the problem in plain terms. Other cultures take pride in themselves. The West, he argued, has become the civilization that apologizes for its past and its success, and that habit is shaping foreign policy for the worse.
Matthew Boyle heard Rubio spell it out this way:
"Well, I think the message is at the core of a lot of what we’re trying to instill in our foreign policy. I think people sometimes forget, like look around our system of government, our culture, our values, the things we believe as a country are important. They’re not just words on a paper. They are backed up by thousands of years of civilization. We are the heirs, we inherited from Greece and from Rome, and ultimately through Europe, many of the values that today underpin our country. A lot of people view that as an attack on other cultures. It’s not. I’m just saying every culture should be proud of themselves. The only culture and the only civilization in the world today who seems apologetic about its history and its achievements is the West, and it’s having a dramatic impact on foreign policy. It is important for us to remind ourselves that we too are heirs to a great civilization that has done great things for humanity and for the world. That many of the things we take for granted in our everyday life, whether it’s the size and wealth of our country, whether it’s our democracy and our republic, whether it’s all of these things, they didn’t come from nowhere. They came from a shared history that we need to rediscover and embrace. We’re doing that here in this country under President Trump. We want more Western leaders to do the same."
That line matches the same America First posture Rubio has pressed in other settings, including when he defended America First foreign policy as common sense ahead of the United Nations.
He said European and other Western leaders are more receptive than public theater suggests. Privately, he said, many call the speech strong and say they agree. Turning agreement into policy still takes time.
The barrier, in his account, is political fear. Leaders worry that speaking this way invites attacks from the far left, media, academia, and entrenched bureaucracies. A viewpoint that should be treated as normal has been branded as something dark.
Rubio expects elections to break that stigma as more candidates say these things out loud and win.
"Yeah, I think I’ve noticed they are receptive to what we’re saying, and even privately, a lot of leaders will tell you ‘that was a great speech, we agree with you.’ Obviously, it takes time for that to translate into policy. I also think there is still, and I think this is true even in our country but certainly in Europe and in other parts of the world, there is still worry that signing up for this point of view and speaking the way we have will open them up to criticisms from their far left, from their media, from their academia, from their entrenched bureaucracy, because we’ve allowed this point of view to be stigmatized as something that’s evil, when in fact it should be embraced as something that is good. So the answer is yes. I sense more receptivity, and I think what you’re really going to start seeing is that play out in elections as more and more leaders are willing to say these things and then get elected. That is ultimately what is going to shift the way other countries respond to our shared interests."
Boyle pressed the inevitable question about 2028 and a possible contest with Vance. Rubio shut it down.
He said he has already answered enough. Some reporters, he added, ask about little else. He has two jobs and not enough hours in the day for either when the calendar gets heavy. He is done with the horse-race routine.
"I’ve said everything. I’ve already said things. Like it doesn’t matter how many times you say it. So at this point, I’m just not answering any more 2028 questions. Not anything against you. It’s the first time we’ve talked, I know. But some of these reporters, that’s all they ever ask me about. I’m just done with it. I’m doing my job. I have two jobs, and I’m focused on them, and they take like every hour of the day. Sometimes I don’t have enough hours in the day, depending on the day, to deal with my job. I just don’t have time anymore for those questions. As far as the speech is concerned, what am I supposed to be doing? I mean, I’m the Secretary of State. I’m supposed to be representing this country on the international stage. I think people, if people like the speech, I think they should be happy and pleased that their Secretary of State is delivering an important message on the global stage. I’m just doing my job. Everybody here is doing their job. The Vice President right now is out there campaigning for candidates to keep us [in the majorities in Congress]. He’s doing his job. You know, the Secretary of Treasury is crushing Iran with sanctions, he’s doing his job. Everyone’s doing their job, and I think we’re all part of the same team. And I think we should all be encouraged when members of the team are doing their job and are doing it well. And I hope I’m doing it well in my roles. That’s kind of where it’s at."
That team framing sits alongside other hard-edged moves from Rubio’s State Department lane, from pressure on Tehran to cases where he expelled Iranian U.N. diplomats who overstayed their welcome in New York.
President Donald Trump, Rubio noted, told the U.N. General Assembly last month that American power should advance American interests. Vance gave a similar civilizational speech last year. Rubio spoke earlier this year at the Munich Security Conference. The Acropolis address fits that same track.
Rubio used the interview to draw a straight line from ideology to vulnerability. For roughly a decade, he said, elites treated expensive energy as a virtue and talked down fossil fuels. A global crisis ended that performance.
Energy, he argued, sits under daily life, industry, and defense. Without it, none of the rest works.
Greece, in his view, is positioned to lead. Politically, Athens is open to exploration and hears public support for it. Geographically, the country sits on historic trade and transit routes linking Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. That makes it a natural hub for pipelines and power moving north into Europe and south toward Israel and the broader region.
"Well, if you noticed, there was a lot of silliness around the world for the last 10 years about how energy, trying to de-emphasize energy, in fact, bragging about how expensive energy needed to become, fossil fuels in order to get rid of them, no one’s talking about that anymore, right? Everyone now, unfortunately, this global crisis has reminded us that at the core of anything we want to do, whether it’s power our daily lives, our industries, or our defenses, it requires energy. I think Greece is in a very unique place, both geographically and politically. Politically, they are open to energy exploration. In fact, they are encouraged by it. They’re excited about it, and their population seems to support it as well. So that’s good. And then geographically, they’re located in a very key place as a transit corridor to build pipelines and ways to transmit energy. Because energy is only as good as your ability to move it, whether it’s oil or gas or the generation of electricity. They’re in a very important place because they are in the perfect place. They’ve always been the connector between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. They’re in a very key place where, in addition to generating energy, they can actually help transport it north into Europe and south into Israel, the Middle East, and broader. They’re in a very advantageous position geographically now for energy, as they have been for trade and so many other industries throughout history."
He said “absolutely” when asked whether the Trump administration wants the rest of Europe to follow Greece’s lead. The Vertical Corridor concept, moving American natural gas, and ideally Greek, Cypriot, and other Western supply, through southeastern Europe toward central, northern, and eastern Europe and Ukraine, fits that hope. Greeks and Cypriots are already partnering with American energy firms on regional gas reserves.
Rubio also revisited a first-term Trump warning that German reliance on Russian energy created a blackmail risk. European leaders and much of the U.S. press mocked the point. Dependence on Moscow, Rubio said, was one reason Vladimir Putin thought he could move on Ukraine without a serious European response.
"I remember I was in the Senate at the time, but President Trump, in his first term, said that the Germans had left themselves vulnerable to Russian energy as a tool of blackmail in case of conflict and they laughed, they mocked him. Our media mocked the president for saying that, and our media celebrated European leaders that laughed at the president. Well, guess what? That’s exactly what happened. Their dependence on Russian energy is one of the reasons why Putin went into Ukraine because he thought he could, because he believed Europe wasn’t going to do anything about it, so I hope they’ve learned that lesson. It seems like they now are, but it takes time now to reverse engineer twenty years of both this green hyperbole in terms of believing they’re going to go completely green and their belief that they could somehow not develop any domestic sources of energy and in fact just be overly reliant on one method. So the answer is I hope they are because Europe’s future depends on it. Right now, their economy faces, unfortunately, real stagnation in most of these countries because their fuel costs, both for electricity and transport, are incredibly high. They were already higher than they should have been even before the recent conflicts."
High power and transport costs, he said, are already dragging European economies. Reversing twenty years of green overpromise and single-source reliance will not be quick. Europe’s future still depends on learning the lesson.
The interview came about 48 hours after Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as U.S. ambassador to Greece. Rubio moved to kill any storyline that the post or the relationship was being downgraded.
Greece, he said, is a major ally on energy independence, regional stability, and NATO. He noted that Athens raised defense spending on its own, without waiting for American pressure. The country deserves an ambassador with real access to and confidence from the president.
A replacement will go through the normal identification and confirmation process. In the meantime, he said, a solid team stays on the ground. None of it should be read as a slight against Greek ties. Sources familiar with Rubio’s meeting with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said energy dominated the talks.
That alliance talk sits in a wider pattern of Rubio treating diplomacy as leverage, not therapy, the same instinct on display when he ordered Iranian U.N. diplomats out after talks went nowhere, and when he has taken a hard line pressing Kyiv as he called out strikes tied to American oil shipments.
Breitbart’s account placed the Rubio sit-down in a broader moment. Trump has shared the outlet’s interviews with Serbian leader Aleksandar Vucic, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides on Truth Social. Vucic, now running for prime minister after leaving the presidency earlier this year, has embraced Trump’s approach and said the president would get a hero’s welcome in Serbia.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned violent leftist riots in Milan around the same period. The interview itself was filmed before a wave of left-wing street violence stretched across parts of Europe, from France to Italy to Albania and beyond. France’s 2027 race already casts Marine Le Pen as a leading conservative contender. Serbian elections were ahead when Rubio spoke.
Rubio’s bet is simple. When Western leaders stop treating their own civilization as a suspect and start talking like heirs instead of defendants, voters notice, and policy follows.
A country that will not defend its own inheritance will not defend its interests for long. Rubio is telling the West to remember who it is before someone else notes the next chapter.