Donald Trump’s announcement Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would replace Mike Waltz to serve as the interim national security adviser appears to have taken the State Department completely by surprise.
When a reporter asked State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce during a press briefing about Rubio’s new role, she was visibly caught unawares.
“It is clear that I just heard this from you,” Bruce said.
A flustered Bruce couldn’t answer questions about the announcement, clearly reeling. “Well, I have some insights as to the potential of certain things that might happen,” she vamped.
“You can have a general sense of what’s possible, and then you see that manifest usually, but I think that one thing certainly that I have learned is that things don’t happen until the president says they’re going to happen,” she added, another incredible non-statement.
Bruce admitted she’d been caught off guard, incredulously attributing Trump’s sudden announcement to “the miracle of modern technology.”
If the State Department’s spokesperson wasn’t made aware of the announcement, it’s likely that Trump’s decision was not given much time to marinate at the State Department, raising questions about whether Rubio had any advance notice at all that he’d be taking on yet another government job.
Rubio now wears several hats for the Trump administration. The secretary is also serving as the head of what remains of USAID and the acting archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration—and in doing so, has found himself leading both an agency that has violated the Federal Records Act and the one that is meant to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Bruce’s apparent shock also raised even more questions about the circumstances surrounding Waltz’s sudden departure earlier Thursday. The former national security adviser, who was responsible for precipitating the Signalgate scandal that rocked the White House, will now serve as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
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