Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected media attacks on America First foreign policy as empty posturing, defining it as putting U.S. interests before the UN and the old global order.
In a long-form interview filmed Thursday morning at the State Department in Washington, Rubio told Breitbart News that critics who sneer at the phrase are out of step with basic reality. He framed President Donald Trump’s message to the United Nations General Assembly as a straightforward call to use American power for American ends.
Rubio did not soften the point. Foreign policy, he said, has to serve the country that elected the government running it. The full interview is still to be published, but his answers already draw a bright line between national interest and the habits of the old foreign-policy class.
He went straight at the media tone that treats “America First” as a slur.
"I know that people in the media, not this media but other media, like to criticize the term ‘America First’ as some sort of evil thing."
Then he flipped the challenge back on them.
"Let me ask people: How many candidates would be elected if they went out and told the American people, ‘My job is to put America second, or America third, or America last.’ If they don’t like America First, they should have the guts to go out there and tell people, ‘I am running for office on the belief that our foreign policy should be driven by America second or America third.’"
No serious candidate runs on that platform, Rubio said, because voters already understand the job.
Rubio cast the doctrine in plain terms. Every nation looks after its own people first. Diplomacy exists to manage the gaps when interests do not line up. That is not isolation. It is priorities.
"So I think the president’s basically saying common sense, which is our foreign policy and what we do around the world, is going to be driven by what’s good for America. Now we would argue that what is good for America is probably also good for many of our allies as well, and in those instances in which what’s good for us and what’s good for someone we like are not exactly aligned, then we’ll work on it with diplomacy and try to manage all of that. But in the end, America First is common sense."
He tied the approach to the country’s actual weight in the world: the largest economy, the most powerful military, and the most influential culture. Those tools, he said, should advance U.S. interests, which in turn help allies and stability when the goals match.
That same focus has shown up in other State Department moves under Rubio, including the expulsion of Iranian UN diplomats who overstayed their welcome in New York.
Rubio made the ranking of loyalties explicit. American interests come first. International bodies come after.
"America First, meaning we’re going to always do what’s right for America before anything else. We’re going to put it before the UN. We’re going to put it before the global commons, or whatever you want to call it, the global order that people worshiped around here for a very long time. We’re not against any of those things. We’re just not going to put them ahead of American interests anymore. That’s what the president’s doing, and it offends a lot of people in these think tanks and editorial writers."
He added a blunt verdict on what happens when those voices set the course.
"But if we had listened to them, I mean, at this point, America would be a middle power."
Rubio’s description of Trump’s UNGA message stayed consistent: the United States will deploy every element of national power to further its own interests, and that posture also serves partners when interests align. He did not present this as a break with alliances. He presented it as an end to treating alliances, the UN, or abstract “global order” talk as higher authorities than the American people.
The interview landed against a wider record of hard-edged State Department action. Rubio has already ordered Iranian U.N. diplomats out after talks went nowhere, a concrete case of putting U.S. terms ahead of diplomatic theater.
He also linked the doctrine to migration enforcement and visa control. The department under his watch has removed 25,000 migrants whose home countries refused to take them back, and moved to strip visas from birth-tourism operators after a Supreme Court setback. Those steps match the same standard he voiced on camera: American interests first, then the rest.
Critics in think tanks and editorial pages have long treated that ranking as radical. Rubio’s answer was that their alternative never gets sold honestly to voters, because it cannot. A foreign policy that puts the UN or the “global commons” above the United States is a hard sell in any election, and for good reason.
The exchange left little room for mystique. America First, in Rubio’s telling, means the government uses the country’s economic, military, and cultural strength to serve the country first. Allies benefit when goals overlap. When they do not, diplomacy manages the difference. What it will not do is subordinate U.S. interests to institutions or theories that spent years treating American power as a problem to be managed rather than an asset to be used.
That clarity also tracks with Rubio’s standing inside the party. An early look at the next cycle showed Rubio dominating a 2028 GOP straw poll, a reminder that the message he is carrying travels well with the coalition that put this administration in office.
Thursday’s interview did not unveil a new slogan. It defined an old one the way most Americans already hear it. The secretary of state said the United States will act like a sovereign country with the means to defend its people, and that the people who find that offensive should try winning an election on the opposite pitch.
Voters never asked Washington to put them second. Rubio is simply saying the government will stop pretending otherwise.