A defiant Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed in sometimes personal terms with his former Senate Democratic colleagues on Tuesday, calling their criticism evidence of his success.
Several Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, on which Mr. Rubio served before joining President Trump’s cabinet, said they were deeply disappointed in Mr. Rubio and regretted voting for his confirmation.
The contentious scene reflected Democratic fury over Mr. Trump’s policies, such as the evisceration of U.S. foreign aid programs, which they said benefited rivals like China. Mr. Rubio, they argued, had betrayed his principles while serving Mr. Trump.
“I have to tell you, directly and personally, that I regret voting for you for secretary of state,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, told Mr. Rubio after castigating him for approving huge cuts to aid programs promoting human rights, public health, food assistance and democracy.
“First of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Mr. Rubio retorted, launching into an unapologetic response that produced shouting and gavel banging as Mr. Van Hollen called portions of Mr. Rubio’s answer “flippant” and “pathetic.”
The Senate confirmed Mr. Rubio in January by a 99-to-0 vote. Many Democrats said he had promised to be a responsible steward of the State Department. And they privately hoped Mr. Rubio would check Mr. Trump’s disruptive impulses.
Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada was among those who said on Tuesday that they felt betrayed. “As a mother, a senator and a fellow human being, I can tell you that I’m not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration’s destruction of U.S. global leadership,” she said. “I’m simply disappointed, and I wonder if you’re proud of yourself in this moment when you go home to your family.”
Mr. Rubio did not directly respond to those comments, though he was testy when Ms. Rosen asked for a yes-or-no answer about whether he supported recently cut foreign aid programs that helped women.
“This is not a game show; I’m not going to answer that with a yes or no,” Mr. Rubio said. “We’re not abandoning women’s issues.”
Amid the acrimony, that was a consistent theme from Mr. Trump’s top diplomat: The U.S. Agency for International Development may have been dismantled and folded into the State Department, with billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid slashed. But the Trump administration, he insisted, would continue foreign aid work it deemed efficient and vital to U.S. interests.
Mr. Rubio said his goal was “not to dismantle American foreign policy, and it is not to withdraw us from the world, because I just hit 18 countries in 18 weeks.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a withdrawal,” he said.
He also contested claims that the cuts to foreign aid created an opening for Beijing, which Mr. Rubio has long warned is in a fierce competition with Washington for global influence.
“We still will provide more foreign aid, more humanitarian support, than the next ten countries combined,” Mr. Rubio said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that China has either the capacity or the will to replace the U.S. in humanitarian assistance and food deliveries, or in developmental assistance.”
Mr. Rubio’s remarks carried added weight, given that Mr. Trump appointed him as his acting national security adviser earlier this month, after ousting Michael Waltz from that job.
The dual role, last held by Henry A. Kissinger in the Nixon and Ford administrations, is a sign of Mr. Rubio’s success at staying in Mr. Trump’s good graces. Many analysts had predicted that the mainstream views for which Mr. Rubio was known as a senator would quickly lead him to run afoul of Mr. Trump.
Republicans praised Mr. Rubio throughout the day. Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that Mr. Rubio and Mr. Trump had “accomplished incredible things in a short period,” including securing the border, helping secure a cease-fire between India and Pakistan and freeing American hostages from Hamas.
Senate Democrats continued to hammer Mr. Rubio, including at a second hearing in the Appropriations Committee.
Several Democrats said the Trump administration had acted illegally in shuttering U.S.A.I.D., and pointed to the human toll of foreign aid cuts.
Mr. Van Hollen said that the cancellation of U.S.A.I.D. programs had led to “countless preventable deaths of children and others.” Citing the end of a food program in Sudan that had helped to sustain two million people on the brink of famine, Mr. Van Hollen said that “people died because of those actions.”
Multiple Democrats also accused Mr. Rubio of making exaggerated claims about wasted foreign aid spending — a key rationale he has cited for the Trump administration’s deep cuts to programs.
Mr. Rubio said on Tuesday that just 12 cents of every dollar spent by U.S.A.I.D. was “reaching the recipient.”
“That means that in order for us to get aid to somebody, we had to spend all this other money supporting this foreign aid industrial complex,” he said. “We’re going to find more efficient ways to deliver aid to people directly.”
Mr. Rubio has cited that figure repeatedly in recent months. But Democratic senators on Tuesday called it misleading, noting that it only reflected aid dollars that went to local organizations and excluded money sent to well-regarded international organizations such as Save the Children.
“Those entities are getting somewhere around 80, 85 percent of the aid we give them, directly to recipients on the ground,” said Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “And so I think what you’ve done to shutter U.S.A.I.D. is illegal. But I also think it’s bad policy. And I do think it’s important for us to all be operating with the same set of facts.”
Democrats also accused Mr. Rubio of helping Mr. Trump deport migrants and foreign students without due process.
Mr. Rubio had acted “to deprive people living in America of their constitutional rights,” Mr. Van Hollen said. “Clearly, you don’t care about the Fifth Amendment right to due process, and you don’t care about the First Amendment either, since you’ve been very busy snatching students off college campuses for exercising their right to free speech.”
Mr. Rubio fired back with a reference to Mr. Van Hollen’s April meeting in El Salvador with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was wrongly deported, and whose case has become a test of the Trump administration’s willingness to comply with the judiciary.
“In the case of El Salvador, absolutely, absolutely, we deported gang members, gang members — including the one you had a margarita with,” Mr. Rubio said. (Mr. Van Hollen has said Salvadoran officials placed glasses with unknown beverages on the table where he sat with Mr. Abrego Garcia, but that he did not take a drink.)
Mr. Rubio broke little new ground on substantive policy measures. He acknowledged that the Trump administration’s move to suspend sanctions on Syria “may not work out,” but that Syria’s new government was at risk of collapse without more foreign investment.
And he challenged Democrats who argued that Mr. Trump’s efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine had benefited President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, saying that the United States had not lifted sanctions on Moscow, and that Western support for Ukraine had continued.
Asked whether the Trump administration would ask Congress for more money to support Ukraine, Mr. Rubio punted. “That’s not for me to decide,” he said.
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
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